


get up, get out, get free

by eneiryu



Series: we know all sorts of things we don't believe [4]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Figuring Out the Rest After, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, POV Nolan, People Who Are Bad at Following Their Own Advice, The McCall Pack Supernaturals' Complete Lack of Manners
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-03-02
Packaged: 2019-11-08 01:41:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 31,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17972072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eneiryu/pseuds/eneiryu
Summary: Nolan knows he’s screwed the second he realizes it’s Rossler and Preston at the door.





	get up, get out, get free

**Author's Note:**

> This is, essentially, _i know all sorts of things_ from Nolan's POV. Thanks once again to [greeneyeedcandy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/greeneyeedcandy/pseuds/greeneyeedcandy), who had a theory about Nolan (and Alec) and how they felt about Theo, and got me thinking. 
> 
> For everyone else who has given me prompts, you have my word: I'm working on them. I've got a follow-up to _the lanterns were lit_ coming up next, and then probably another one of these POV-switches, and then an unrelated story! So I guess the moral is, I'm going to be writing for the rest of my life. 
> 
> Thanks as always to folks who comment, leave kudos, etc.--you make my day every time.

In hindsight, his missing jersey had been an incredibly obvious trap.

Nolan can distinctly remember his mom handing it to him earlier this morning as she’d kissed his cheek and apologized again for missing the game; the same cheek, ironically, that Rossler’s next punch slams against. Nolan’s head snaps sideways and he nearly falls, but Rossler has his left hand wound tightly enough in his collar—tightly enough to be cutting off some of his air, in fact—that Nolan stays up on his knees, fingers scrabbling uselessly at Rossler’s wrist and the floor below him already splattered with blood from his split lip, from the cut that Rossler’s knuckles had opened up just above his left eyebrow.

The thing is, _the thing is_ —stood in the locker room earlier, one hand on his open locker door and the other braced against the locker beside it, eyes on his open bag shoved messily into the bottom and conspicuously _not_ containing his jersey—the only thing he’d been able to think about was Brett and Lori Talbot. That Liam was two lockers over and clearly already in a state, clearly _also_ thinking about Brett and Lori Talbot while Corey tried and mostly failed to calm him down, had only made the sick, nauseating twist in Nolan’s stomach worse. So when Coach had blown into the locker room, already yelling _why isn’t anyone on the field, you think this is a_ game _?_ , all without any trace of irony, Nolan had taken the opportunity to mumble out _I must have left my jersey at home_ and had fled.

And come _here_ , where just seconds after he’d shut the front door behind him, thoughts an incomprehensible blur of _it’s probably still in the dryer_ and _I can’t do this_ , there’d been a knock. And _god_ , he’d been so _stupid_ ; he hadn’t even checked who was there before turning around, brow furrowed, and pulling it open.

It hadn’t mattered that he’d slammed it shut immediately after catching sight of Rossler’s snake-charmer grin and Preston’s heavy-lidded, satisfied stare, hadn’t mattered that he’d somehow managed to shoot the deadbolt home before they could stop him; they’d kicked it in seconds later. Nolan hadn’t managed to get more than ten feet away before Rossler had closed a hand around the back of his collar and dragged him, kicking and yelling, to the ground. He’d pulled him back up quickly enough, though; pulled him up just long enough to slam a fist into his face and knock him back down, and then he’d done it again.

And again.

“Rossler, c’mon,” Preston complains after the fifth, or sixth—Nolan is, understandably, a little hazy on the exact number—strike, “She wants to talk to him. You break his jaw and he’s not going to be _able_ to answer any questions.”

Even through the overwhelming haze of pain, that manages to send a shock of visceral fear through Nolan. _No, no, not her, no_ , he thinks, his fingers spasming around Rossler’s wrist. He doesn’t realize he’s said it aloud until Rossler jams the hand he’d been using to hit Nolan into his hair and clenches it _hard_ , yanking his head back so that he’s forced to look up at Rossler through swollen, watery eyes.

“That’s right, Nolan,” Rossler sneers, “You didn’t think you were done, did you? We’re taking you _home_.”

Nolan tries to swallow back the terrified noise that wants to leave his throat and mostly fails, Rossler’s lips stretching back wider as he catches it. He yanks once more on his fistful of Nolan’s hair, and then all at once he reverses direction, shoves Nolan away from him. It’s so unexpected that Nolan only barely manages to get his hands out to catch himself before he slams into the floor, and he still lands hard enough that his breath gets knocked out of him.

“I bet you thought it was over,” Rossler muses, crouching down in front of him and reaching out to grab Nolan’s chin roughly to make him look up, “I bet you thought you could betray us—betray _her_ —and get away with it.”

Rossler shoves his chin away and stands, smiling down at him. But his smile is sharp, and it doesn’t touch his eyes. Staring up at him, strands of bloodied saliva dripping from his abused mouth as he pants for air, Nolan tries to force his thoughts into some kind of order, screams at himself to do _something_ , to move, to do literally anything but lay frozen on the floor like some deer in the headlights—like _prey_ —but he can’t. Rossler’s grin widens, and his body tenses, and even though Nolan realizes a second before Rossler’s leg draws back what’s about to happen, he doesn’t manage to get his knees up in time and Rossler’s foot slams _hard_ into his stomach.

“You little _coward_ ,” Rossler hisses, the smile twisting off his face into a fierce snarl, and kicks him again; Nolan chokes out another pained gasp, barely recovered from the last one, “You little _traitor_.”

“ _Rossler_ ,” Preston interrupts sharply just as Rossler goes to kick him a third time.

Rossler jerks his head around to glare at Preston, but after a few long, painfully stretched seconds that Nolan spends curled tightly around the core of himself, desperately trying to breathe, his ribs feeling like they’re on _fire_ , he lowers his foot slowly. Nolan doesn’t realize that he’s squeezed his eyes shut until they snap open when Rossler gets a hand back in his collar and drags him onto his knees, Nolan crying out as the movement jars his ribs. His hands fly immediately back to Rossler’s wrist, but he might as well be digging at steel; Rossler doesn’t so much as twitch as Nolan scratches at the back of his hand.

Rossler watches him for a moment, and then he smiles and reaches forward to swipe a deceptively gentle thumb across the blood under Nolan’s split bottom lip, “Preston’s right. It’s going to be okay, Nolan.” His smile widens and Nolan has to bite back a pained, terrified whimper at the sight, “You’re going to make it up to us.”

And then he drags his hand back off of Nolan’s face, arm drawing back and fingers once more curling into a fist. Nolan turns his head and tries to brace for the hit as best he can, eyes squeezed shut and waiting, when all of the sudden, the quiet of the suburban neighborhood is split by the roar of a powerful car engine and the squeal of protesting tires. Rossler’s head jerks around to look, his fist frozen mid-air, just as Theo Raeken comes tearing through the door and skids to a stop, fangs bared and fingers clawed and eyes burning gold.

Nolan stares at him, confusion momentarily displacing some of his body’s screaming protests, his mind just a single blank _what…?_ , because all Nolan knows of Theo Raeken—well, besides the things he’d learned during those few dark weeks that he’s mostly tried to force himself to forget—is that Theo had, at some point between getting captured by Monroe and saving Liam’s life at the hospital, become Liam’s quiet and quietly intense shadow. Nolan hadn’t let himself pay attention to the remaining McCall pack members once things had finally settled back down—it’d felt like an intrusion, somehow, and he’d already done _more_ than enough to them—but it’d been impossible to miss, Theo suddenly there off Liam’s right shoulder like he’d always been there; like he’d always _be_ there.

But none of that explains what he’s doing _here_ , staggering back under the impact of a bullet as Preston whips his gun up and shoots him seconds before the hellhound sheriff’s deputy— _Parrish—_ comes through the door on Theo’s heels, and Preston has to deal with him instead. It leaves Theo free to focus on Rossler, which he does with flared eyes and fanged mouth and clawed hands, the bullet wound on his shoulder—already dripping black blood—ignored.

Nolan’s so focused on Theo that he nearly forgets about Rossler. Or he nearly forgets about him until Rossler hauls him to his feet and puts him between himself and Theo like a shield, a knife he’d pulled from _somewhere_ now in his hand and pressed to Nolan’s neck. When he sucks in a sharp breath—pain and fear both—Nolan can feel the blade digging into his skin.

“Let him go,” Theo orders through his mouthful of fangs, his flared-bright eyes never leaving Rossler’s face.

“I don’t think so,” Rossler answers, and jostles Nolan, who _knows_ he’s being used as a prop, and yet still can’t stop himself from yelping as if on cue, “You feel the wolfsbane poisoning, yet? We didn’t know if any of you filthy dogs would show, what with Nolan here being one of the primary reasons that mutt and his bitch sister are dead—”

Rossler presses his face against the side of Nolan’s head when he says this, spitting it directly into his ear, and Nolan jerks his head as far to the side as he can, feels his chest go brutally tight even setting aside his abused ribs. Rossler keeps going, something about _better safe than sorry_ , and Theo responds, takes a step forward and a step back when Rossler snaps a warning.

But Nolan can’t follow it; his ears are ringing and his mind keeps repeating _the primary reason that mutt and his bitch sister are dead_ and he can’t get enough _air_ , his chest feeling like there’s an iron band around it every time he tries to breathe. He’d brought his hands up to grab Rossler’s arm automatically, but his fingers are shaking, and there’s a terrified corner of his brain that’s shouting for him to let _go_ ; that his shaking fingers are going to shake the knife in Rossler’s hand right into slitting his own throat.

And then he feels the gun against his temple, and awareness slams back into him like a physical blow.

He feels his own eyes go wide, catches Theo’s across from him. But Theo’s expression doesn’t change, and after a beat he smiles smoothly and glances at Parrish off to his side. Then he looks back at Rossler, expression still easy and lips still quirked in an unconcerned smirk, and says:

“Like you said, Nolan here is the reason that Brett and Lori are dead. I think his brains all over the wall is acceptable collateral damage for the chance to have a…” He pauses, tips his chin back and forth thoughtfully, “... _conversation_ with two of Monroe’s top lieutenants.”

Rossler snarls something back and jostles Nolan again, maybe looking for another terrified noise to bait Theo with, but Nolan’s too shocked to cooperate. _Nolan here is the reason that Brett and Lori are dead._ The words ring in his head as he stares at Theo, his mouth dropping open and his breath—even setting the agony of his probably-broken ribs—starting to pant. _We didn’t know if any of you filthy dogs would show, what with Nolan here being the primary reason that mutt and his bitch sister are dead_ —

 _Oh god_ , Nolan thinks, bile rising in his throat.

He feels his fingers slacken around Rossler’s arm, his knees—which had already only been shakily holding him up anyway—give way; Rossler doesn’t notice, too focused on Theo still clawed and dangerous and _close_ , just tightens his grip on Nolan instinctually, holding him up to keep using him as a shield. _Nolan here is the reason that Brett and Lori are dead_ , Nolan’s mind repeats, a broken record playing Theo’s simple statement back to him over and over. Nolan stares at the black blood dripping ceaselessly from Theo’s injured shoulder, hears him say again _acceptable collateral damage_ , and then lets his eyes slip closed, and waits.

He’s so focused on waiting for the bullet that he forgets about the _knife_.

He chokes as he feels it slice through his skin, eyes flying open even as he feels blood start to pour down his neck. But Theo doesn’t look pleased, or even _indifferent_ , because Theo is collapsing.

Just like Nolan, who feels himself get dragged down just seconds after Rossler lets out a pained shriek right in his ear, the two of them going down in a tangle. Nolan stares up at the ceiling once he hits the ground, one hand instinctively flying to cover the cut on his neck, aware in some distant way that he’s starting to hyperventilate even as his senses desperately try to track the sudden burst of chaotic noise all around him: voices shouting back and forth, Rossler swearing viciously nearby; a single crack of gunfire.

Someone yells _Theo_ and Nolan nearly turns his head to look, but before he can, two gentle but firm hands grip either side of his face and hold him still. Nolan forces his eyes open—they keep trying to _close_ —and sees Ms. McCall, her face pale but fiercely determined as she looks down at him. She releases his head once she realizes she has his attention, shrugs out of her sweater and then balls up the fabric. Nolan realizes the instant before she pulls his hand away from his neck what she’s going to do and he tries to jerk away, terrified in an animal way of the almost certain threat of _pain_.

“Nolan, _Nolan_ ,” Ms. McCall soothes as she forces him steady and presses the fabric against his neck, “It’s okay, you’re going to be okay.”

Nolan tries to say something, _anything_ , to ask about Rossler, or Theo, or what the hell Ms. McCall is doing here, but he can’t. His breathing is still too quick, too shallow, his ribs _screaming_ , the tips of his fingers and toes starting to numb, and all Nolan can think is _I’m going to die_. Then he hears the words _acceptable collateral damage_ echo through his weirdly empty skull and he can’t help the high, shocky laugh that escapes his lips.

Ms. McCall stares down at him, expression tightening, and then she looks up and snaps, “Liam, get over here.” Liam—when did Liam get here?—must not move because she snarls his name again, adds, “Theo will be fine. Nolan, on the other hand, is going to go into shock and die if you don’t get over here and take some of his pain.”

Immediately Nolan thinks too many conflicting thoughts, _so this is what shock feels like_ , and _at least Theo will be okay_ , and _take some of my pain…?_ , and misses whatever Ms. McCall says next, though he can see her lips moving. And then suddenly Liam is there looming over him too, expression a weird mix of terrified and determined. Nolan wants to tell him _I’m sorry_ —he’s sorry for a lot of things, but right now he’s sorry for putting that look on his face—but all he manages to do is raise one arm up weakly, trying to paw at Liam’s leg for attention.

Liam catches his wrist, but before Nolan can get his numb mouth to cooperate, Liam is pushing his sleeve up and carefully wrapping his fingers around Nolan’s skin. Nolan feels his brow furrow, his attempts to form his lips around his _I’m sorry_ momentarily derailed, and then he gasps and arches at the completely alien feeling of his pain drawing like it’s been magnetized towards and then away through Liam’s hand on his wrist. For the first time in—in— _for the first time_ since Rossler and Preston first showed, really, Nolan can breathe, and as he sucks in a deep pull of air, his head clears some.

He hears the Sheriff talking into a radio, Ms. McCall giving instructions in a cold and measured voice about Rossler and Preston, both apparently wounded. But then in the next instant Theo lets out a loud, pained shout, and while the sound tears at Nolan’s newly-restored consciousness, it’s not the noise itself that catches and holds his attention: it’s the way that Liam, above him, goes stock-still and his eyes fly to where Theo must be, hold there wide and unwavering.

 _Oh_ , Nolan thinks drunkenly, and reaches out to paw at Nolan’s leg again. Liam still has his near wrist so he goes to use his other hand, the one on the side of his injured neck, but Ms. McCall makes a frustrated noise and gently but firmly pushes him back flat. The interaction breaks Liam’s focus on Theo, though, and Liam glances back down at him, brow furrowing.

“I’m sorry,” Nolan tells him, syllables slurring, “I’m so sorry, Liam.”

He means for Theo, and the look it put on Liam’s face. He means for Brett and Lori, earlier in the locker room when Liam had been trying and failing to reconcile himself to their deaths. He means for the school, when he’d forced Liam to choose between outing himself and his pack or taking the beating that Nolan and Gabe had given him.

He means for a lot of things.

“Shut up, Nolan,” Liam whispers, his eyes flickering gold; his fingers tighten on Nolan’s wrist, too, but never past the point of pain.

“No, you have to listen,” Nolan insists, and this time when he goes to reach for Liam, Ms. McCall leaves her restraining hand on his shoulder, “I’m _sorry_.”

“Ambulances are here,” The Sheriff interrupts, and that sets off another chaotic round of movement and noise as everyone prepares to deal with the newcomers, to move.

But Nolan—Nolan ignores all of that, his head falling bonelessly upright again, the absence of his pain where he knows pain should be leaving his chest feeling hollow, his head fuzzy, and he can almost feel the way that the words _the reason Brett and Lori are dead_ carve themselves into the bones of his ribs holding that hollowness in. He feels Liam’s hand still on his wrist and Ms. McCall still holding her ball of fabric against his neck, but all he can think is, _I’m sorry_.

“I’m sorry,” He tells Liam, tells Ms. McCall, tells Theo wounded-but-going-to-be-fine, tells Brett and Lori’s silent ghosts:

“I’m _sorry_.”

\---

Nolan wakes up in the hospital the next morning to find Mason sitting cross-legged on one end of a cot that has appeared from somewhere in his room, Corey stretched out across it with his head in Mason’s lap, both of them talking in the low, practiced tones of people used to keeping bedside vigils.

They notice he’s awake almost immediately, Mason’s face splitting into a wide grin that Corey quickly catches and realizes the reason for. He tips his chin on Mason’s thigh to look at him and grins, too, and then swings his legs up and then sideways so that he’s sitting as he says _hey, Nolan_ cheerfully. Nolan stares at them, shocked mute, and can’t think of anything to say through his haze of sleep and medication and the dull but ever-present throb of pain that the latter can’t quite wipe completely away.

His memory of the last twelve hours is mostly a blur, a soft-edged kaleidoscopic smear of the ambulance ride and Liam’s dad in his white lab coat and the various members of the McCall pack rotating in and out of the edges of his vision, all of them with pinched, hunted expressions. Liam had been the worst of it, hovering directionless and restless because of it just out of Nolan’s vision while his dad stitched up the long, jagged cut on Nolan’s neck. It’d been during that endless stretch of time that Nolan—desperate for a distraction while the needle tugged in and out of his numbed skin—had realized that Liam’s dad didn’t know about Liam, or any of it, since Liam had explained his presence by spilling out some painfully awkward story about him and Nolan being _friends_ , rather than Liam and the others having interrupted his kidnapping-stroke-murder.

It was only after Liam’s dad had finished Nolan’s stitches and had him transferred to a room that Nolan had simultaneously learned what the McCall pack had done with Theo and at least one reason why Liam was so agitated; Theo had been left, unconscious and badly wounded, but recovering, at the animal hospital under the watchful eye of the veterinarian-but-not Dr. Deaton. Stuck in his hospital bed and still dazed from the medication that Dr. Geyer had given him—and, well, the whole night—Nolan had found himself watching Liam, getting a little dizzy as he did as Liam paced frenetically from wall to wall in the cramped room. He’d checked his phone every rotation, and based on his tight expression, he’d always been disappointed by whatever he saw.

Until he wasn’t, and was just _angry_ , because Theo had, apparently, woken up and gone straight back to—in Liam’s words, snarled at Mason and Corey by that time standing awkwardly off to the side and very deliberately _not_ looking at each other— _playing fucking Sherlock Holmes instead of staying the fuck down_. Nolan had watched the whole exchange mutely, and then he’d watched as Ms. McCall had appeared in the doorway to yell at Liam about yelling in the hospital, before she’d come over to Nolan’s bedside, needle in hand. _Ignore him_ , she’d told Nolan as she’d inserted the needle into his IV line, _he’s just emotionally constipated_. Nolan hadn’t had time to take her advice or refuse it; the sedative she’d given him had kicked in, and he’d passed out almost immediately.

And now, the next morning: Mason and Corey, the smiles starting to slide off their faces as the silence drags.

They glance at each other, and Nolan can almost see the entire speaking conversation they have without words. He swallows and looks down, away from them, a little embarrassed at his own blank inability to come up with anything to say, but _christ_ : he tried to help a group of genocidal maniacs kill them all not that long ago. Put _that_ on a freaking gift-shop condolence card.

“Your parents are on their way, should be here soon,” Mason finally offers.

Nolan knows this, because the Sheriff had made a point to stop by his room after his stitches but before Ms. McCall had knocked him out to tell him, but he doesn’t say that, just nods in thanks and gives Mason a flicker of a smile. Mason returns it, but Nolan can’t hold his gaze, just drops his eyes back down and starts to pick at the blanket over his legs. The movement pulls at his stitches, though, and Nolan winces and bites back a noise, one hand rising instinctively to touch the gauze over his neck.

“Oh, right. We should find someone to give you a pain-drain,” Mason exclaims, sounding almost relieved, like Nolan had just given him something productive to do, “I think Malia and Derek are still out searching the town for signs of hunters, and Scott’s upstairs with the Sheriff. That leaves Liam or Theo, but they’re still asleep together next door, aren’t they?”

He directs this last part to Corey, who considers it for a moment and then shrugs, hopping off the cot, “I’ll get Liam. All he did last night was force the rest of us to listen to him bitch about Theo for hours, he can deal with waking up and doing some actual work.”

Mason snorts a laugh and watches him disappear through the doorway before returning his gaze to Nolan, smile softening.

Curiosity momentarily overwhelms his embarrassment, so Nolan bites his lip and then says, “So they are together, then. Liam and Theo, I mean.”

Nolan expects a nod but Mason just sighs heavily and turns his eyes heavenward, “God, you’d _think_ so, wouldn’t you?” But apparently that’s rhetorical, because he continues, “All evidence to the contrary, however, they are not.”

Nolan’s about to press the point, because seriously, he _saw_ the look on Liam’s face last night when Theo got hurt, but he’s preempted by the sudden explosion of angry voices just outside his door.

“Jesus christ, Theo,” Liam snaps; apparently _waking Liam up_ —with its attendant corollary of _not_ waking Theo up—hadn’t gone quite to plan, “Would you just _slow down_ for a second? Rossler and Preston are in custody, and Derek and Malia haven’t found any other traces of hunters. It’s over, town’s safe.”

“This time yesterday morning we would have said the same thing,” Theo retorts shortly.

“Okay, _fine_ ,” Liam replies, just as Theo comes through the doorway into Nolan’s room, Liam hot on his heels; Corey slips in after them and exasperatedly rolls his eyes behind their backs, “But it isn’t all on _you_ , let the others—”

“Didn’t Scott text you and ask you to find out from your dad when Nolan is going to be released?” Theo cuts him off pointedly, turning to glare at him.

Liam stops and stares at him, jaw working and top lip already half-raised in an incredulous, fiercely annoyed snarl. But Theo just continues to glare, implacable, and after a few long seconds Liam just shakes his head and throws up his hands, pivots on his heel and storms back out of the doorway without another word. Theo stares after him for a beat and then he takes a deep breath, his shoulders sagging, and glances into the room, acknowledging its other occupants for the first time.

“Mason,” He greets shortly.

“Hey, Theo,” Mason returns carefully, then grimaces at Corey behind Theo’s back when Theo comes forward towards Nolan, still prone and wide-eyed on the bed.

Nolan doesn’t know what to say, but Theo either doesn’t care or doesn’t need his participation; he sits one hip on the edge of Nolan’s bed and takes hold—gently—of one of his wrists. Almost immediately the low-grade nausea disappears from Nolan’s gut, along with the sharper spikes of pain radiating out from his ribs and neck that had kept breaking through the morphine. Instinctually, Nolan finds himself trying to catch Theo’s eyes, but Theo isn’t looking at him; his gaze seems permanently fixed on a spot just above the clean white stretch of bandage over Nolan’s neck.

“How’s that?” He asks after a few long, slow seconds.

“Good,” Nolan answers immediately, and horrendously enough can feel himself _blushing_ , “Really—really good. Thanks.” Then, before he can stop himself, he adds, “How are—you got hurt last night. Are you…?”

“I’m fine,” Theo replies instantly, a little harshly; Nolan fights not to flinch. Then he seems to catch himself and he sucks in a quick breath, exhales it out through his nose, glances up and meets Nolan’s eyes for the first time, and says more quietly, “No lasting damage.”

Nolan stares at him, still wide-eyed and unhelpfully mute, but he at least manages a nod. Theo studies him for a second longer, and then his eyes flicker down to the bandage and he abruptly releases Nolan’s wrist and stands.

“I’ve got to get back to Rossler’s and Preston’s motel room,” He says, and Nolan doesn’t know why he’s announcing it until he sees Mason bite his lip out of the corner of his eye.

“Are you sure you should…?” Mason starts, but Theo doesn’t give him a chance to finish.

“I’m _fine_ ,” He snaps, “Do I need to take out a freaking ad online, maybe turn a few cartwheels? Tell Scott if he needs me that I’ve gone to recheck the room.”

“Okay, sure,” Mason says immediately, hands coming up in a _don’t-shoot-the-messenger_ kind of gesture.

Theo glares at him for a few seconds and then transfers his heated look to Corey, daring him to argue, but Corey also raises his hands, palms out. Huffing in irritation, Theo ignores them both—and Nolan behind him—and heads for the door, slips out of it without another word. Mason waits for a few beats and then—confident that Theo is far enough away not to overhear him, maybe—he covers his face with his hands and groans as he drags them down his cheeks, pulling his skin and lips down in an exaggerated grimace.

“The two of them, _seriously_ ,” He complains, and Corey crosses the room to wrap him in a sympathetic—if shamelessly amused—embrace.

Corey flicks Nolan a look, clearly trying to include him in the joke, but Nolan immediately jerks his head away, throat tightening. It’s just... _surreal_ , all of it: Mason and Corey clowning around his room, Theo coming in to take his pain after already taking a bullet for him, Liam taking his pain _last_ night…

Theo— _any_ of them, really—showing up to help him at all.

 _I tried to kill you_ , Nolan thinks about reminding Mason and Corey, the two of them once more silent in the suddenly heavy air of the room, _I tried to help_ her _kill you_. Maybe there’d been a primordial shapeshifter running around inducing them all into succumbing to their worst fears at the time, maybe Nolan had switched sides last minute and helped the McCall pack finally break Monroe’s hold on Beacon Hills; none of that changes the fact that Nolan still _did_ all the things that he did.

“Look, Nolan…” Mason starts hesitantly, and Nolan braces himself, somehow terrified of what Mason’s going to say next, even though he has no idea _what_ Mason is thinking of saying next.

It winds up moot, anyway; Scott comes through the door, looking disheveled and distracted but still irrepressibly upbeat, an expression of almost puppy-dog confusion on his face.

“What’s up with Theo?” He asks, a little charmingly oblivious to the heavy tone of the room, “I just ran into him, and he smelled...off.”

Mason and Corey both frown thoughtfully, but before they can answer, Liam stalks back into the room and replies acidically instead, “He’s probably just upset that he couldn’t martyr himself like he so clearly wanted to last night.” Scott squints at him, the expression a little comical given that Nolan has seen him take on several heavily armed hunters and _win_ , but Liam just ignores him and continues, “My dad says Nolan can leave in a few hours, once his bloodwork comes back.”

Scott looks at him a few moments longer, clearly weighing whether he needs to respond to Liam’s comment about Theo, and then he shrugs, “Well that’s good news, at least.” He turns to beam at Nolan, “Your parents just arrived, they’re downstairs talking to the Sheriff.”

Nolan’s convinced that’s going to be the end of it, the McCall pack handing off responsibility to Nolan’s parents and therefore restoring some kind of sense to the world, but he is—once again—completely wrong. Scott goes from being sort of unconsciously dopey to _deliberately_ dopey, and spins this whole tale of earnest concern for Nolan’s parents, the two of them stood at the end of Nolan’s bed, very clearly trying not to be confused by the crowd of McCall pack members crammed into his hospital room.

But they’re just as clearly willing to _buy_ it, like the overwhelming presence of so many concerned bodies somehow offsets the fact that Nolan was nearly murdered in their foyer last night. And Nolan doesn’t _blame_ _them_ , exactly—he’s just as glad to still be alive as his parents are that he is—but the whole thing just seems to compound the absurdity of the situation, Scott all but begging for permission to protect someone who once tried to kill him and everyone he loves. It makes a sick, twisting thing take up root in Nolan’s chest where before it’d been only hollow, Nolan barely able to stutter out an agreement when his parents look to him for his thoughts.

So that’s how Nolan ends up wedged in the backseat of his parents’ car a few hours later with Liam and Corey, the two of them chatting casually with his parents in the front seat. It’s how he ends up back in his room at home, his parents escorting him and his honor guard quickly past the foyer and ruined front door and up to his room, where—for lack of anything better to do and just completely out of his depth—he climbs into bed while Liam and Corey tool around his room, picking things up and putting them back down, talking easily amongst each other, obviously aware of Nolan’s awkwardness but willing to steam right over it.

And it’s how, several hours later, Nolan ends up once again staring at Theo Raeken as he stands silently off to the side while Scott siphons his pain, Scott chattering on the whole time about the McCall pack’s plans for keeping an eye on him.

“I’m really sorry about all this,” Scott tells him apologetically and _completely sincerely_ , which Nolan doubly doesn’t know how to handle since Scott is, in essence, apologizing for saving his life and then trying to _keep_ _it_ saved, “But I’d really appreciate it if you wouldn’t mind letting some of us hang around, make sure Monroe isn’t going to try anything else.”

‘ _Wouldn’t mind letting us,’_ Nolan repeats skeptically to himself, glancing away from Theo and down into Scott’s upturned, friendly smile. It’s a mistake, though, because it means he winds up catching the spidering black veins as they crawl up Scott’s arms, the side of his neck; it means he winds up catching the barely-there tightening of the skin around Scott’s eyes as he experiences Nolan’s pain, instead. Nolan feels his expression spasm, that sick, twisting _thing_ in his chest back and squirming, and almost immediately Scott’s eyes go wide and alarmed, his mouth opening.

But Theo rescues him, again.

“Hey Scott, weren’t you supposed to meet Argent right about now?” Theo asks suddenly, and when Nolan jerks to look up at him—Scott doing the same—Theo is frowning thoughtfully down at his phone, every inch of his body bleeding oblivious sincerity even though Nolan _knows_ he’d been studying the two of them intently a split-second earlier.

Scott blinks, then grimaces, “Didn’t he say eight? I could’ve sworn he said eight.” He glances back at Nolan, clearly still concerned with Nolan’s unease, but Theo’s hooked him; after a beat—Nolan schooling his expression back flat—he turns back to Theo, “I should go, regardless. Argent’s eight is everyone else’s seven and change. Would you mind…?”

“I’ve got it,” Theo answers, then jerks his chin towards the door, “Go ahead, I’m on watch tonight anyway.”

“Thanks, Theo,” Scott says gratefully.

He carefully releases Nolan’s wrist and stands, shakes himself a little; shakes off the last lingering remnants of Nolan’s stolen pain. Nolan clamps down on his grimace at the sight, the squirming thing in his chest, unwilling to make Theo rescue him _again_.

Scott looks back down and smiles at Nolan, once more oblivious, “Let Theo know if you need anything, okay? And the rest of us are sticking close, just in case.”

Nolan manages to mumble out some kind of agreement that Scott, thankfully, takes as-is. He gives Nolan one last smile and then pivots on his heel, claps Theo on the shoulder as he passes him and disappears out into the hallway. Theo stays stood where he is, head cocked, for a few long seconds—waiting for Scott to get out of the house, maybe—and then he comes forward towards Nolan still sat uselessly in his bed.

And maybe that’s what does it, that thought—how utterly _useless_ he’s been throughout the last twenty-four hours, frozen and helpless throughout his beating by Rossler and then tongue-tied and awkward through the aftermath—that makes him jerk his hand away when Theo goes to reach for it. Theo freezes immediately and looks at him, half-crouched over the bed from where he’d twisted to start to sit and expression momentarily—momentarily _panicked_ , of all things.

And Nolan doesn’t know what to do with that, so he just blurts out, “I’m fine, you don’t—don’t need to worry about it.”

Something in Theo’s expression smooths out, and he reaches for Nolan’s wrist again as he finishes sitting, doesn’t let Nolan jerk away when Nolan tries it again, tries to insist he’s fine. The surreal pull of his pain flowing out towards Theo’s fingers gently wrapped around his wrist starts up almost immediately after, and Nolan can’t help biting his lip as his breathing—still occasionally sharp, occasionally hitching as his broken ribs protest his expanding lungs—eases.

“Punishing yourself won’t change anything,” Theo says after a few minutes, voice quiet and even but...subdued, somehow.

And Nolan, because he’s an _idiot_ , because he can remember overhearing Monroe asking Gerard about Theo after the standoff at the police station when she’d first became aware of him, can remember Gerard saying _I wouldn’t worry too much about Theo—chances are someone from the McCall pack will kill him before you can_ , Nolan opens and mouth and replies:

“You know that from experience?”

Theo looks up at him, startled. The black veins of Nolan’s stolen pain keep spidering up the side of his neck—the same side that had taken the bullet last night—and Nolan catches them out of the corner of his eye, too shocked at his own stupid mouth running off with his own stupid thoughts to look away from Theo’s wide eyes and blown open expression.

But Theo recovers quickly, his features smoothing. He drops his gaze from Nolan’s face to his wrist, still held in Theo’s grip, and doesn’t respond immediately. As the seconds drag, become half a minute, then a minute, Nolan becomes more and more convinced that Theo isn’t going to respond at all, and he swallows, unsure whether he’s grateful or disappointed.

Eventually the last of Nolan’s pain drains away, the inky black lines of it fading from his body and from Theo’s pitch-black veins, and Theo releases Nolan’s wrist. But he doesn’t stand immediately, doesn’t move, just stays staring down at Nolan’s hand now laying limply in his lap. Then he sucks in a breath and flicks a look up at Nolan’s face, meets his eyes, though his eyes dart there-and-back to the pristine white stretch of bandage over his neck.

“Let them help you,” He tells Nolan finally, and then he hesitates briefly; but just briefly, “You want to make up for what you did to them? Start by making sure they don’t have to find your corpse, figure out the rest after.”

Nolan stares at him, the squirming thing in his chest momentarily shocked still. Then, as the full impact of what Theo’s telling him sinks in, his shoulders start to heave, his eyes start to burn. There should be pain—his ribs should be protesting, his stitches should be pulling—but there _isn’t_ , Scott and Theo took it all, and Nolan’s whole expression twists and he jerks his face to the side, mortified and grateful and ashamed and just so, so damn _sorry_. There’s a sharp, clawing _desperation_ climbing its way up his throat, this urge to yell _it isn’t that simple_ , to ask _is it that simple_ ; to beg _please, let it be that simple_.

But Nolan can’t bring himself to say any of it out-loud, and even if he could: his throat’s too tight, strangling the words. He can feel Theo’s attention against the side of his face but he doesn’t say anything, just rises to his feet after a few long seconds, leaves Nolan and his shaking shoulders on the bed. Nolan has his eyes squeezed shut, can’t see him, but he recognizes the muted creak of the particular section of floor just to the right of his bedroom doorway, realizes that Theo had headed towards the door. His eyes snap open and his gaze flies to Theo, stood with his back to Nolan and one hand on the door jamb. After a beat he glances back over his shoulder, his eyes dark and shadowed in the dim light coming in from the hallway.

“I’ll be around all night. Get some rest, Nolan,” He orders quietly, and then he leaves.

Nolan stares after him, fingers clenching in the blanket over his lap; he stares after him for a long time.

\---

But Nolan—he resolves to take Theo’s advice: he starts by making sure the McCall pack doesn’t have to find his corpse, and then—every time the sick, twisting feeling in his chest starts to squirm—he concentrates on figuring out the rest.

It’s easy enough, at first: he just has to let Liam, Mason, and Corey herd him from class to class over the next week like particularly neurotic sheepdogs, Liam constantly glancing over his shoulder like he’s concerned Monroe is going to pop out from the Chemistry room or something—not exactly impossible—while Mason doggedly pulls Nolan into conversation, and just as doggedly makes Corey do the same. They get a few weird looks—they get a _lot_ of weird looks, actually; a not insignificant portion of the school was either there or heard about Nolan and Gabe kicking the shit out of Liam that one time—but they all roll right off the McCall pack member’s backs, like the currently-temporarily-quartet of them is all they need.

It makes Nolan’s sneered comment to Jiang back at the police station— _don’t you mean your_ pack _—_ seem all the more asinine.

The first hiccup in Nolan’s resolution comes the week after the attack, the McCall pack no longer staking out Nolan’s house twenty-four seven but Liam, Mason, and Corey—the ‘high school crew,’ apparently so named by Theo and the moniker unfortunately now set in stone—still pulling him along in their wake. Nolan’s trying to figure out how to tell them it’s okay, that the immediate danger seems to be over, that now that the McCall pack is aware of Monroe’s interest in him, they don’t have to be worried about him this specifically anymore. But he never quite seems to get around to it. He just keeps trailing after them, or more accurately before them; Liam has a thing about taking up the rear of their little party that Nolan alternately finds secretly amusing and a little tragic.

But that hiccup gets resolved as anticlimactically as possible towards the end of the first week as lacrosse practice is wrapping up, Corey and Liam down on the field and Mason and Nolan up in the stands. Liam looks up at Mason and yells _Theo’s?_ , and Mason raises his arm and gives him a thumbs-up. Nolan swallows back a grin at their antics and keeps packing up his stuff, mind already idly spinning out his plans for the rest of the night: heading home, finishing the last of his biology lab, binge-watching episodes of _Chopped_ in attempt to keep his brain mindlessly occupied and away from the memories of Rossler grinning down at him, hand choking-tight in his collar and Nolan’s blood staining his upraised knuckles.

He stands as Mason does, slinging his backpack over his shoulder, and follows him down and out of the stands. They hit the ground and Nolan turns left, towards the parking lot, mouth already half-open to say _see you tomorrow_ to Mason as he heads for his car.

“Oh, do you...know the way to Theo’s?” Mason asks hesitantly from behind him.

Nolan stops and turns around to look at him, “What?”

Mason returns his confused look, “I mean, if you do, that’s great, we can totally meet you there, I just thought you’d want to follow me or Liam.”

Nolan just stands and stares at him, baffled. It doesn’t take long for Mason to put the pieces together and he grimaces, rubs a hand over the back of his neck.

“Right, sorry,” He says, inexplicably, “You’re probably sick of us hovering over you. I know we can be a lot to handle.”

It isn’t what Nolan expected, and he realizes instantly that Mason put the pieces together _wrongly_. But Mason doesn’t give him time to recover, just makes another face—likely at himself—and pulls out his phone.

“Look, I’ll text you the address, okay?” He finally offers, “We go to Theo’s to work on homework sometimes, you’re welcome to join. If—if you want.”

Nolan’s phone vibrates against his leg with the text, and Mason gives him one last embarrassed half-smile and turns for the school, waving over his shoulder. It leaves Nolan standing stupidly in the middle of the sidewalk, too wrong-footed to do anything else. Seconds later the loud, rusted sound of the old-and-much-abused metal doors swing shut behind Mason, breaking Nolan’s frozen train of thought and jolting him back to himself. Frowning, Nolan reaches down and fishes his phone out of his pocket, stares down at Theo’s address on his screen.

His first immediate instinct is to shove it back into his pocket and go home, the words _pity_ and _imposition_ sitting sharp-edged and immovable at the forefront of his mind. But he thinks about Mason’s half-embarrassed smile— _you’re probably sick of us hovering over you_ —and then he thinks about Theo, Nolan’s pain still fading from his skin in inky black lines and saying _figure out the rest after_. Slowly, like his body is waiting to see if his mind is going to reverse course, Nolan presses his thumb over Mason’s text, taps his phone once when it asks if he wants to open Google Maps.

Twenty minutes later, Theo rolls open the door for him. He doesn’t step back to let him in immediately, just leans the arm he’d used to pull open the door against the door jamb above his head and studies him, expression thoughtful.

Finally, he says, “Mason was pretty sure you weren’t going to show.”

He looks almost—almost _impressed_ , Nolan thinks, and Nolan has to fight to keep his pulse down, his breathing even; spending so much time around Liam had taught him some instructive things about werewolves’ ability to sense emotions, right along with—at least for Liam—their complete lack of _manners_ about their discoveries. Adopting a fake-it-‘till-you-make-it strategy that he’s mostly sure Theo can see right through, Nolan meets Theo’s eyes and shrugs.

“I’m figuring out the rest,” He answers blandly, and has to fight back a hot twist of feeling in his chest when Theo has to noticeably fight back a grin.

Theo gives it another half-beat and then he shoves off the door, leaves it open for Nolan as he turns and heads back into the apartment, past a bunch of bookshelves filled with a truly baffling assortment of random items and back towards a large table set opposite a giant map of the western United States. Nolan hesitates for a second, heart pounding notwithstanding his attempts to keep it steady, and then he steps into the apartment, slides the door shut behind him and goes to join Theo at the table to wait for the others to show.

After that—after that, _figuring out the rest_ takes on a whole new meaning.

He stops being surprised every time Liam, or Mason, or Corey pop up by his side in between classes, slide into the seats next to him at lunch already chattering a mile a minute. He goes with them to Theo’s after practice some days, Theo’s irritation—which Nolan begins to suspect might be a little exaggerated, especially considering just how easily he’ll let himself be distracted from his work by Liam—notwithstanding. He gets to know Liam’s and Mason’s parents when they rotate through their living rooms for homework and movie nights and random dinners, and Nolan’s parents steadily get used to the reverse.

At some point he gets added to the pack’s group text, which nearly gets him in trouble the first time it starts blowing up mid-day on a Wednesday. Nolan checks it furtively underneath his desk, already half-panicked, only to realize that it’s Stiles and Derek, initially discussing one of Stiles’ assignments but quickly devolving into some fierce but utterly pointless argument about nineteenth century painters. It doesn’t take the rest of the pack long to start interjecting with commentary meant solely to heap fuel on that fire, Nolan watching the texts scroll by in bemused fascination. Seconds later, Liam kicks the back of his chair just as the teacher starts down their aisle.

The pack dinners and lacrosse games are more complicated.

The first game, Theo overrides every one of Nolan’s protests on their way from Nolan’s house—Theo on watch—and escorts him up to the stands where Ms. McCall, the Sheriff, and Mason are already sat. He keeps a dual-purposed hand on the back of Nolan’s neck, primarily to take his pain but ensuring—as a no-doubt intended secondary consequence—that Nolan can’t make a break for it. He at least lets Nolan sit on his far side, and doesn’t say a word no matter how many times he catches Nolan darting glances at Ms. McCall, Nolan’s mind dredging up a perfect sense memory of Gabe saying _I did it for you_ , fresh from the attempted slaughter at the McCall house and his hands still smelling like cordite and smoke where he’d gripped Nolan’s face between them, dark eyes burning madly.

It doesn’t get any better three days later when Liam drags Nolan to the pack’s apparently traditional Sunday night dinner, the McCall house loud and raucous and just _full_ in every way that could possibly matter. Nolan nearly turns right back around and leaves, _figuring out the rest_ notwithstanding, but before he can, Scott grins at him from the couch and waves him over, and Nolan finds himself stepping further into the house before he knows what he’s doing. That cluelessness remains the theme of the night, but around about the time that he winds up stood in the kitchen—the same kitchen that Gabe had _shot up_ —with Ms. McCall checking his stitches, he just gives in.

That’s probably why the next lacrosse game, he lasts about ten minutes after Ms. McCall slips in between him and Theo—Theo making way instantly, the traitor—and throws one arm around his shoulders before he’s yelling just as loud as she is. Theo leans out of the way of their stomping feet and flailing arms, but when Nolan glances over at him—Nolan’s face split in a wide grin and the sick, squirming thing in his chest gone still—there’s a smile playing around Theo’s lips.

But there was a _reason_ that Nolan wound up with Monroe, and his sudden and unexpectedly near-seamless initiation into the McCall pack’s ranks or not, that reason still lingers.

Away from the prying eyes of the rest of the town, the McCall pack is free with their abilities, casual and comfortable with their deadly claws and fanged mouths, their bright eyes and their superhuman strength. Corey takes Mason’s hand one day in the chaotic break between classes and camouflages them both, doesn’t drop it until Mr. Tanner—endearingly if aggressively trying to recruit Mason into volunteering for the upcoming PTA night—passes them by; Liam doesn’t so much as blink, though Nolan startles badly enough that he drops his armful of notebooks. Later that week, Ms. McCall forgets to put out a massive pack of chicken breasts for the pack’s planned cook-out, and Parrish comes to her rescue, the skin of his hands glowing like molten rock as he quickly defrosts them.

Derek shows up at Theo’s one night, ostensibly to study Theo’s giant map but, Nolan suspects—based almost entirely on how token Derek’s initial refusal to Theo’s first offer is—more likely interested in the gigantic pot of chili that Theo had made and then grudgingly surrendered when Liam, Mason, Corey, and Nolan had shown up at his door. The two of them do talk shop for a while, but at some point the conversation takes a turn, and they end up in the middle of Theo’s living room, the coffee table pushed out of the way as they trade sparring moves, their deadly claws out and flashing and always seemingly just a hair’s breadth from each other’s skin. Nolan, his attention helplessly caught, doesn’t realize that he’s put his pen through several layers of his notebook until Corey makes a comment.

But it’s at a pack dinner a couple of weeks later that it all comes to a head.

It’s a warm night and the McCall pack spends it in the backyard, Ms. McCall, Argent, and the Sheriff all tag-teaming the grill while the rest of the pack lounge around in small, ever-shifting groups. Nolan realizes something is up when he catches sight of Liam and Malia off to the side, their heads close together and both of them sporting conspiratorial grins; Liam sees Nolan watching them and grins, puts a finger to his mouth. Amused, Nolan mimes zipping his lips and turns back to Mason and Corey, forgets all about Liam and Malia quickly.

Ten minutes later, though, through a sequences of events that Nolan mostly misses but involves Liam, the pitcher full of ice-water that Ms. McCall had set out on the patio table, and a blue-eyed coyote that Nolan blinkingly realizes is Malia, Theo winds up drenched and sputtering. Liam _loses_ it, and Theo stares at him, mouth open and his hair dripping comically into his eyes, before he suddenly says _oh,_ hell _no_ , and leaps forward, landing on all fours as a sleek and _big_ black wolf, instantly taking off after Liam as he bolts cackling away, after Malia when she gives a coyote-grin and dances out of the way.

That lasts a few rotations around the backyard until Derek—unamused both by the spray of water that comes off Theo’s coat and the way that Liam tries to use him as a human shield—suddenly hits the ground on all fours, too, somehow even _bigger_ than Theo, and manages to get all three of them corralled in less than minute. Ms. McCall, Scott, Mason, and Corey all wind up bent over, hands on their sides as they gasp with laughter, and even Argent, the Sheriff, and Parrish grin at the admittedly comedic sight.

But Nolan—Nolan finds himself suddenly back in the library, huddled up against a set of bookshelves and staring down at the grotesque, heaving body of the Beast, its spectral eyes shining in the dark of the room, the moonlight glinting off its bloody claws and deadly teeth, its breath and body absolutely _foul_ with the scent of rotten flesh and viscera.

He comes back to himself when he feels a hand on his shoulder and he looks up, startled, into Scott’s concerned eyes, “Nolan?”

For an instant, a beat, Nolan sees Scott as he had been that night, bloodied and beaten. He squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his head, then quickly stands, Scott’s hand falling away.

“I’m fine,” Nolan says quickly, “I just realized, my mom asked me to call her. I’ve gotta go—gotta do that.”

He doesn’t look at Scott’s face, just turns and hurries towards the house. He nearly stops in the kitchen but it’s not far enough, too close to Scott and the others and their supernatural senses, and so he stumbles his way up the stairs—the McCall house now familiar enough that he can move on autopilot—and into the hallway bathroom. Immediately he dives for the sink, turns on the water full-blast and covers his face with his hands, bends nearly in half as he rests the back of his forearms against the counter.

His pulse is pounding and he can feel sweat breaking out along his temples, his fingers shaking even where he’s got them pressed hard against his scalp. _You’re okay_ , he tries to tell himself, _the Beast is dead_. _This pack, they’re nothing like the Beast_. And he knows that, he _knows_ , and even more than that, he knows that Theo, and Scott, and the others are the ones that saved him from Rossler and Preston; saved him from his _own_ people. But he keeps seeing the way that Theo’s and Derek’s wolf forms had moved as they’d shifted from human to wolf, so different and yet so similar to the deadly grace with which the Beast had moved. He keeps seeing the way that their eyes had glowed, just as otherworldly as the Beast.

Nolan spends the next twenty minutes bent over the sink like that, beating back the memories of that night, desperately trying to untangle them from his memories—his firsthand _knowledge_ , now—of the McCall pack. Eventually his heartbeat slows and he can breathe easier, can reach one hand out and shut off the water. He leaves his forehead against his other arm, inhales and exhales a few more slow, deliberate breaths.

Finally he stands, and as he straightens, awareness of the rest of his surroundings filters back in. Whatever interruption Nolan’s abrupt departure may have caused hadn’t lasted, apparently; when Nolan, curious, looks out the bathroom’s small window, he can see the various members of the McCall pack back to talking and horsing around in the backyard. In fact…

In fact, when he looks, he realizes that Malia, Derek, and Theo hadn’t bothered to shift back. Malia and Derek are sprawled out across the sun-warmed wood of the back patio, Ms. McCall, Argent, the Sheriff, and Parrish maneuvering good-naturedly around them as they move between the grill and the table, setting out dinner.

And Theo—Theo is sprawled out next to Liam out in the yard, his tongue lolling, apparently beyond pleased with the way that he’d seemingly managed to transfer most if not all of the water from his wet coat onto Liam’s shirt. From the wild way that Liam’s hair is sticking up and the mud is streaking his arms and soaked clothes, Nolan is willing to bet that Liam had lost a short-lived wrestling match over his right to stay dry. As Nolan watches, Liam says something and then barks out a laugh and shoves at Theo’s front shoulder when Theo’s only response is to apparently huff out a huge gust of air; Nolan can see the grass in front of his muzzle rustle. But Liam leaves his hand on Theo’s coat, winds his fingers in it, and Theo—Theo lets him.

Nolan knows he should go back down, give some kind of excuse for his behavior, but as he watches Scott drops down next to Malia, lets her lift her head into his lap as he strokes gentle fingers over her muzzle—just over her deadly teeth—and tugs fondly on one of her ears as his eyes flash red. A few feet away, Derek heaves himself to his feet and goes to lean against the Sheriff’s side, sat in one of the patio chairs talking idly with Argent; he reaches out an absent hand and wraps it easily around Derek’s lupine bulk, scratches as his chest. Seconds later, Ms. McCall trails her fingers across the top of Derek’s head as she passes him, Derek lifting his nose to follow it. Then they both look up, startled, when Corey swears, then relax when Corey yanks his burned hand—already healed—away from the platter of sausages with a sheepish expression directed at Mason, who rolls his eyes.

The sick, twisting feeling in Nolan’s chest—always lingering—fades almost completely away, and the high, panicked catch in his throat dissipates. He watches for a few moments longer, and then Nolan—he goes back down and joins them.

Scott glances up and then grins widely when he sees Nolan step back through the backdoor, apparently satisfied with whatever he sees—or hears, or smells. Nolan gives him a brief flicker of a smile back and goes to join the others at the table, Mason waving him into a seat at the end that he’d apparently saved. He’s just finished sitting when Ms. McCall orders Derek, Theo, and Malia inside to shift back; she makes a face when Liam stands, his shirt a wreck, and orders him inside to change, too.

Nolan very deliberately forces himself not to flinch back as Derek climbs to his feet and starts padding towards the house, Malia rolling up and off of Scott’s lap as Derek passes her to follow him inside. He forces himself still and then, when Theo—walking slowly towards the house, Liam’s hand still resting absently on his back—Nolan lets the very tips of his fingers uncurl against the armrest of his chair, lets them brush against the very tips of Theo’s coat. Theo doesn’t react, but he doesn’t move _away_ , even though Nolan’s absolutely _sure_ he noticed; Liam slides the patio door shut behind him and Theo, and Nolan curls his fingers back against his palm.

He spends the rest of dinner with the sense memory of Theo’s—with a _werewolf’s_ —coat prickling over his fingertips.

\---

It’s possible that the Sheriff could look more apologetic when he asks Nolan to testify against Rossler and Preston, but Nolan isn’t sure _how_.

The entire McCall pack—minus Lydia and Stiles, still on the East Coast for school but there in spirit and Stiles’ incessant text messages—is crammed into the McCall living room and watching the Sheriff, stood next to the TV and grimacing. Sat on the couch in between Corey and Mason, Nolan tries very hard not to notice the way that everyone _else_ is trying very hard not to look at _him_ , knows it’s at least sixty-percent a completely wasted effort because his heart has started to race, which means every supernaturally-sensed pack member in the room can hear and smell his reaction.

“Is that really necessary?” Scott asks from the loveseat, elbows on his knees and expression serious as he looks away from Nolan and back to the Sheriff, “What about Theo, or Liam?”

“It’s probably not a good idea to invite that much scrutiny into my background,” Theo points out neutrally from his place leaned up against a wall; everyone else winces, but Theo just continues on, “Besides, doesn’t the official police report say you and Parrish were the only other ones there, besides Nolan?”

The Sheriff nods and Scott frowns. Then he _really_ frowns and asks, “Hold on. How’d you explain the claw marks on Rossler’s legs, then?”

“Police canine,” The Sheriff says blandly, then grins when the entire room ripples with startled laughter.

“It’s okay,” Nolan interjects as their amusement fades away and the light atmosphere in the room starts to fade; he repeats to himself _figure out the rest after_ and adds, “I can do it. I’ll be—I’ll be fine.”

 _Very convincing_ , Nolan snarks to himself, ignoring the way that Scott glances at Argent, at Malia, at Derek; at Theo over Nolan’s shoulder. He meets the Sheriff’s eyes as steadily as he can, instead.

“I’ll testify,” Nolan tells him firmly, and this time actually manages to _sound_ firm, too, “If that’s what it takes to put Rossler and Preston away, then I’ll testify.”

The Sheriff smiles at him and says, “Thanks, Nolan. You’re doing a good thing.”

Scott still looks unhappy about the arrangement, but he doesn’t argue. Instead, he and the Sheriff, along with Argent and the rest of the pack, start strategizing about how to handle the trial, since no one has much faith in Monroe just letting it roll on uninterrupted. Nolan tries to follow it for a few minutes—they’re talking about him, after all—but eventually his burst of bravery fades and he slumps back against the back of the couch, his mind a whirling mess: _figuring out the rest after_ is one thing; deliberately painting a target on his back is another.

He gets jolted out of his thoughts some time later when Scott turns to him and asks, “What do you think, Nolan? Does that sound okay?”

Nolan blinks at him and then looks around at the rest of the pack, sat looking back at him and waiting for his answer, “Um. Sorry, what?”

Scott just smiles gently and repeats, “I was saying that we’ll escort you to and from the trial, all of us. We’ll be there the whole time.”

Nolan stares at him, a little taken aback, and then a little annoyed at his own surprise; what did he _think_ the McCall pack was going to do, leave him dangling in the wind alone? He grimaces, but Scott’s still waiting for an answer, so Nolan clenches his hands against his thighs and says:

“Yeah. Yeah, that sounds good. Thanks, Scott.”

The second it leaves his mouth, something occurs to him with all the grace and subtlety of a freight train: he’d never thanked the McCall pack for saving his life. Literally: he’d wordlessly acquiesced to their requests to keep an eye on him, he’d followed them around for _weeks_ ; he’d gotten wrapped up enough in the pack and its daily rhythms that it’d been easy to forget that things hadn’t always been this way.

But he’d never _thanked_ them.

He nearly blurts it out right then, nearly interrupts the way that the conversation—the strategy for the trial decided upon—starts to shift to other things, innocuous things, everyone relaxing; Malia getting up to go raid the McCall fridge, Liam reaching out to prod Theo with a foot as he asks him something unrelated. But Nolan slams his mouth shut around the words, knowing that a sudden torrent of apologies—however much he means them—would be unhelpfully inapropos. Instead he forces himself to set his realization aside—not _forget_ it, but set it aside—and joins the conversation, answers a question that Mason asks him; throws a decorative pillow at Liam when he makes a smart remark.

But over the next few weeks, he starts a campaign.

He shows up at the McCall house early one morning before school to catch Scott and Malia before they leave on their next trip, stands in the front door and manages to stutter and stammer his way through a _thank you_. Malia gets fed-up halfway through his incoherent rambling and takes hold of a fistful of his shirt, yanks him into the house and makes him sit down at the kitchen table while she and Scott finish drinking their coffee, shoving pieces of toast into their mouths. Argent appears soon after and Nolan startles to his feet, nearly knocking over his chair, to repeat the whole, somewhat-humiliating experience. Thankfully Argent just claps him on the shoulder and gives him a single brisk nod, then hands him a travel mug full of coffee and orders him to school.

Nolan brings the mug—scrubbed clean—and a container of _lomo saltado_ from the Peruvian place downtown to the hospital the next day, hands both to Ms. McCall at the nurse’s station with his face flaming. She accepts it and his awkward thank-you—his hand rising thoughtlessly to touch the thin, raised scar across his neck—with an initial soft smile. When she opens the container and realizes what he’s brought her, though, she shrieks in delight and leans over the counter to yank him into a hug, Nolan giving a startled _oof_ as the edge digs into his stomach.

The Sheriff’s harder, but only because Nolan has to figure out a way to sneak him a bag of takeout without somehow alerting Stiles’ many spies in the station to that fact. It winds up being Derek who comes to his rescue, stepping out of his Toyota and noticing Nolan frowning at the station from beside his car, greased-stained bag in hand. He smirks and holds out his hand for it, then jerks his chin towards the doors and escorts Nolan inside and towards the Sheriff’s office, acknowledging Parrish’s _so I guess you’re okay with sleeping on the metaphorical couch for a week_ with an idle flick of his fingers. When they reach the Sheriff’s office, though, Derek hands him back the bag and gently shoves him inside, closing the door after him.

Even as Nolan is thrusting out the bag towards the Sheriff and stumbling his way through his now well-worn _thanks for saving my life_ speech, his phone starts to vibrate incessantly against his leg. Five minutes later, back in his car after having switched places with Derek—the Sheriff happily munching his way through a paper sleeve of curly fries—Nolan checks it and has to bite back a laugh at the long—and growing longer—series of accusatory texts that Stiles has directed Derek’s way via the group text.

So Nolan ends up thanking Derek for that _and_ for his role in saving Nolan that night, stood awkwardly in Derek’s doorway having run up the two flights of stairs from Theo’s. If he’d thought about it a little more, he might have taken them a little slower: Nolan can tell that his face is red—exertion and nerves both—and he’d nearly spilled the bowl of chicken curry—stolen from the pot Theo had just made—several times on the way up. Derek blinks at him momentarily when he opens the door and then his expression softens and he accepts the bowl and Nolan’s stuttered thanks.

He ends up rescuing Nolan _again_ seconds later when he realizes that Nolan has no idea how to leave the conversation gracefully, and ends up grinning and leading him back down to Theo’s, bowl of curry still in hand, to join the others camped around Theo’s table. Theo looks up when they enter and immediately zeros in on the bowl in Derek’s hands, his expression going irritated and then resigned in quick order; Nolan bites back a smile and goes to get his own bowl from the kitchen.

Mason is probably the easiest of the bunch. He smiles and smacks Nolan lightly in the shoulder with the back of one hand, says _welcome to the insanity, it’s like the Hotel California_ , and then leans over Nolan to reach the set of test-tubes they need for their biology lab; case closed. Liam must have overheard them, because when Nolan approaches him in the locker room before practice that afternoon, he just grins and shoves a bag full of lacrosse balls into Nolan’s arms.

“Thank me by running the back-shot drills, huh?” He says, eyes crinkled up with his smile but still...aware, somehow; still cognizant of all the things that they aren’t saying, “Watching Mickens try and continuously fail hurts my soul.”

So Nolan runs the back-shot drills while Liam works with the defensive line—his own soul hurting all the while as Mickens does, indeed, try and continuously fail to hit the net—and then later that night he follows Corey into Theo’s kitchen and thanks him, too.

It’s harder than Nolan expects, both given how many times he’s given some variation of the same speech by then and the fact that it’s _Corey_ , who besides Mason is probably the easiest-going person Nolan has ever met. But Nolan has seen Corey glancing at his scar when Corey thinks Nolan isn’t looking, has seen the way that his face closes down and his shoulders get tight. So Nolan tries to think of way to phrase _if it hadn’t been for you, I’d be a dead man_ —because his post-hoc realization that Theo hadn’t, in fact, intended to sacrifice him to Rossler and Preston hadn’t changed the fact that Rossler had Nolan pretty well-and-trussed that night—but he can’t think of anything that doesn’t sound either overly dismissive or outright psychotic.

Corey doesn’t drag it out, though; his lips flicker in a smile that he’s clearly trying to bite back and he cuts Nolan off, says simply _you’re welcome._  Then he jerks a thumb over his shoulder towards Theo’s fridge and adds, _you want one of those Mexican sodas Theo gets?_ , ignoring Liam shouting for Corey to grab him one, too, and Theo immediately warning Liam that _you drink the last of those and you’re going out to get me more_.

After that, the only one that Nolan has yet to cross off his mental _thanks for saving my life_ list is Theo, but doing so turns out to be nigh impossible.

For one thing, everytime Nolan thinks about thanking him, he remembers the way that Theo’s fingers had felt, wrapped around his wrist and siphoning his pain as Theo gave him, possibly, the most useful advice he’s ever received. But for _another_ , every time that Nolan works up the courage—his chest fluttering with more than just lingering shame and embarrassed nerves—Theo disappears. It isn’t obvious, at first; Theo does it so naturally that it takes Nolan nearly two weeks to realize that he’s doing it _on purpose_.

He finally resorts to asking Liam about it, since Liam seems to be the universally-acknowledged Theo-whisperer.

“Theo is just like, weirdly allergic to people acknowledging that he can be something other than a gigantic dick,” Liam tells him breezily, but his expression is completely at odds with his tone; his mouth purses unhappily and his jaw works, “Look, just...try one more time, alright? And if he runs away again, I’ll—I don’t know—sit on him for you while you do it.”

Nolan blinks, a little distracted by the immediate—and hilarious—picture his mind creates in response to Liam’s offer, and then he shakes himself and manages to agree. So later that night, when Theo gets fed up with Liam’s constant and not-particularly-subtle inquiries into the contents of Theo’s fridge, Nolan braces himself and follows Theo into the kitchen, Liam’s eyes burning against his back.

But Theo doesn’t even let him open his _mouth_.

He jerks to look at Nolan, half-bent over the fridge and bag of leftover chinese food in one hand, and his whole expression snaps shut. Nolan’s about to backpedal, apologize—clearly there’s something here he’s missing, something other than Theo just being _allergic to people recognizing that he can be something other than a gigantic dick_ —but Theo just straightens and shoves the bag into his chest, Nolan’s arms coming up to hold it automatically, and storms past him back into the apartment. Seconds later Nolan can hear him snap at Liam that he’s going to run a patrol, orders him to lock up when they leave.

Nolan stands dumbly in the kitchen for a few minutes longer, plastic bag crinkling in his hands, and then—for lack of anything better to do—he walks over to the counter and sets it down, starts dishing the leftovers into bowls. Liam comes in at one point and gives him a sympathetic grimace, takes charge of heating up the various dishes as Nolan finishes filling them up and—to Nolan’s surprise—doesn’t say a word about Theo’s abrupt departure, sarcastic or otherwise.

Try as he might not to, Nolan is still thinking about it that night when he gets home. It’s the look on Theo’s face that sticks with him; startled, defiant, annoyed, but mostly—and here, Nolan is really, _really_ qualified to state with certainty—guilty.

He’d looked _guilty_.

Nolan stares at himself in the mirror as he brushes his teeth, mind looping around a single question: what the hell did Theo have to feel _guilty_ about? He’d saved Nolan’s _life_. He’d nearly _died_ in the process. And look, Nolan isn’t an idiot, he _knows_ that Theo’s history is checkered—to say the absolute least—but the look on his face hadn’t been for everything _else_ he’d done; he’d stared Nolan straight in the eye and looked guilty about _that_.

Frowning, Nolan takes his toothbrush from his mouth and stares sightlessly down at it, then forces himself to spit and rinse it off, finish his nightly routine; he’d maybe have to take Liam up on his ridiculous offer after all. He falls asleep still picking at the edges of that conundrum, so of _course_ his stupid brain decides to give him something _else_ to worry over.

He sits bolt upright as he wakes up just a few short hours later, his shirt drenched with sweat and his shoulders heaving with his rapid breathing, his ribs aching and his face throbbing with phantom pain, Rossler and Preston somehow free and back at his door, but this time— _this time.._. Nolan hunches over the center of himself and tells himself _it was just a dream, they can’t hurt you_ , reminds himself that the McCall pack would never let them get ahold of Nolan again, that they _hadn’t_ , even back when they’d been reluctant allies at best and grudging acquaintances at worst.

It doesn’t really help.

After a few useless, shuddering breaths that do nothing to slow his racing heartbeat, Nolan throws back his blankets and stumbles towards the door, snags a hoodie at the last moment as he heads—quickly, but quietly—towards the stairs and then out towards the back door. The second the cold night air hits his face he shivers, but it’s...relief, maybe, the shock of it snapping the last clinging threads of the dream’s hold on him. Exhaling heavily, Nolan drops down onto the top of the patio steps and covers his face with his hands, tries to fill his mind with the quiet sounds of the night-dark neighborhood rather than his own too-quick breaths or pounding pulse.

It’s probably why he startles back so hard when Theo barks at him.

Admittedly, he doesn’t _know_ it’s Theo when he first hears it, but it only takes a few seconds—Nolan’s head and shoulders throbbing some from where he’d accidentally slammed them back against the door—to realize that the pitch-black wolf standing against the pitch-black sky is Theo, his eyes glowing bright like lanterns and his body hunched defensively. Squinting at him, Nolan says his name and immediately relaxes when Theo chuffs.

Baffled, Nolan stares at him, then remembers Theo snapping at Liam as he’d left—as he’d _fled_ , really—earlier that night, “You were out patrolling.”

Theo makes that same chuffing sound in apparent agreement and straightens up, the burning of his golden eyes fading, as he apparently accepts that Nolan believes it’s really him. Nolan’s first, immediate thought is to try and thank him _now_ , with Theo voluntarily in his backyard and seemingly less likely to bolt, but then he stops and thinks again, Theo is _in his backyard_ , as a wolf, in the middle of the night.

Nolan opens and closes his mouth a few times as he processes this, but his still nightmare-addled brain runs away with his mouth before he can come up with anything less inane to say than: “But why did you come…?”

Then it hits him, all at once, and he glances there-and-back up towards his room, his face flooding with color; Theo had sensed his stupid nightmare. Dropping his head away from Theo’s penetrating stare—lupine or not—Nolan scrubs the back of one hand over his face, trying to get his uncooperative facial muscles into an expression that screams less _helpless victim_ and more _well on his way towards figuring out the rest_.

He isn’t...really successful.

Giving up on his expression, Nolan instead tries for verbal reassurance, says, “It was just a dream. Sorry for the false alarm.”

He must sound even less convincing than he looks, because Theo stares at him—somehow managing to portray _completely unconvinced_ even without a human face to do it with—and then sits, like stubbornness personified.

Grimacing, Nolan looks away and wraps his arms around his knees, steels himself and insists to the patch of slightly-yellowed grass just off Theo’s right paw, “Really. It was just a stupid dream. Rossler—” Nolan’s voice cracks, because this whole experience hasn’t been humiliating enough, but he forces himself past it, “Rossler and Preston came back, and this time—this time...”  


He can’t finish. Swallowing past his suddenly too-tight throat, Nolan looks down and away, fingers spasming against his arms still wrapped around his knees. Except in the next moment he can’t hold that position, because Theo is there, pushing gently but inexorably forward until Nolan ends up dropping his knees and opening his arms almost without thought to allow him forward. Theo takes immediate advantage of the space, presses closer until he’s pressed up right against Nolan’s chest, the cold tip of his nose skirting over the thin scar on Nolan’s neck until his head ends up over Nolan’s shoulder.

At first Nolan doesn’t know what to do, shock replacing every other racing, useless thought in his head. But in the next instant the contact—the _comfort_ , the animal, instinctual closeness—cracks something open in Nolan’s chest and it _all_ —Rossler, Preston, the McCall pack’s too-good-natured acceptance of him, Monroe and Gabe, Jiang and Tierney and Brett and Lori Talbot—comes pouring out of him. He gives a wounded cry and wraps his arms tight around Theo’s lupine form, buries his face in Theo’s side and feels tears start to spill from his squeezed-shut eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Nolan tells him, and means for the way that Theo’s shoulder had blackened and festered and nearly killed him that night all those weeks ago.

“I’m sorry,” Nolan tells him, and means for the way that Liam had looked when Nolan had held a loaded crossbow to his head, Brett and Lori’s ghosts hovering forever between them.

“I’m sorry,” Nolan tells him, and means for the way that Gabe had pressed close to Nolan and whispered _I did it for you_ after he’d nearly killed Scott’s parents, nearly killed Argent, and Lydia, and Mason.  


“I’m sorry,” Nolan tells him, and means for how stupid he’d been, the small-minded fear he’d hoarded after the Beast, the seed of hatred and prejudice that the Anuk-ite had found and nurtured into full-blown bigotry, but the heart of it, the _core_ of it, still Nolan’s, still his.

“I’m sorry,” Nolan tells him, and means for all of it, for the whole damn terrible and terribly unchangeable mess of it, the way that Nolan would give anything to go back and undo any of it, undo all of it, and knows he’ll never be able to; that he’ll have to live with it—that he’s _alive_ to live with it—because the McCall pack, who he’d tried to slaughter, who he’d tried to massacre, fought to ensure that he could.

And Theo just stays still and lets Nolan tangle his fingers too-tight in his fur, lets him bury his animal cries in his side; lets him take whatever he needs, for however long he needs.

He stays still a long time.

\---

Alec is...different.

For one thing, he seems more terrified of his new abilities than Nolan could ever be, constantly startled by his shifting nails and shifting teeth and the sight of his shifted eyes in the reflection of windows, of silverware; of the framed photo of the McCall pack taken some pack dinner and crammed into one of Theo’s bookshelves. The first night that Theo lets them over after Scott brings Alec back, Alec won’t get within ten feet of Nolan or Mason unless there’s a supernatural—with supernatural healing—between them, and even then he refuses to take his clenched-tight fists out from underneath his biceps until Corey all but impales him on the bottle of soda he’s insistently holding out to him.

Nolan can’t help but watch him, fascinated.

It’s just—Alec is the first newly-turned supernatural that Nolan has ever met. All the others Nolan has known had been fully grown into their powers by the time Nolan came into the picture, their extraordinary abilities already integral parts of who and what they are. But Alec—Alec was human until less than a week ago, and it _shows_.

Luckily Mason, Corey, and Liam are there to draw him—and Theo, who keeps sneaking glances at the giant map on his wall, his eyes tight and his mouth pinched no matter how many bottle caps Liam flicks at his head—out, because Nolan finds his tongue even clumsier than usual as he studies Alec’s ducked brow, his fidgeting fingers. Alec catches him a handful of times, the first few with an expression like he’s convinced Nolan is scared of him, or disgusted, and that’s the reason Nolan is looking, but something of Nolan’s helpless fascination must be bleeding through Nolan’s own expression because eventually Alec’s goes confused, and then a little...intrigued.

But he still jams his hands back underneath his arms when Nolan gets up to grab some paper towels from the kitchen.

He relaxes a little more when Liam shoos them all over to the still-pulled-out couch, leaving Theo to get back to playing mission control for Scott and the others as he’d so clearly been desperate to. Nolan sits against the back of the couch—Alec’s current _bed_ —with Mason and Corey beside him, and tries to be a little less obvious about darting glances at Alec, sat next to Liam on the floor, as the hours wear on. His success rate isn’t exactly high—it’s a little hard to concentrate, Nolan playing absently with a tear in the sheets covering the pull-out mattress that he realizes with a jolt must be from Alec’s _claws_ —but Alec doesn’t seem to mind; half the time when Nolan flicks his eyes over to him, Alec is doing the same, both of them coloring and looking away quickly.

Nolan doesn’t remember falling asleep mashed against the corner of the couch, his face pressed up against Alec’s pillow that Corey had set against the top of the couch earlier that night. He _does_ remember Liam waking him up and ordering him up to Theo’s bed, but only vaguely; even the sharp realization that _he’s going up to sleep in Theo’s bed_ only buys him a few extra seconds of awareness before he’s passing right back out.

Early the next morning, Nolan knows the second he comes downstairs—Mason and Corey stumbling through the front door from where they’d spent the night in Derek’s apartment—that something had gone horribly wrong with Scott’s hunt for Monroe last night. Liam is sitting stone-faced and silent at the kitchen table, Theo standing at the other end of it from the map with his head in his hands, his whole posture exhausted.

And Alec—Alec’s eyes are golden, and his mouth overfull with fangs, his no-doubt clawed hands hidden once more underneath his biceps; Nolan bites his lip and wonders, before he can stop himself, exactly what anxiety and anger smell like; what racing heartbeats sound like.

Nolan spends the two minutes it takes Mason to find his keys trying to think of something to say to him—he knows better than to try Liam, and Theo looks already defeated even though it’s barely six in the morning—the return of Alec’s hunched and defensive posture eating at him. He doesn’t manage it, but he at least—bottom lip between his teeth—gives Alec and the couch a wide berth as he follows Corey and Mason out.

Once at the door, though, he stops and glances back to find that Alec is looking back at him, fanged mouth twisted in a grimace and self-recrimination all over his face. Nolan isn’t able to think of anything to say _then_ , either, and he grimaces back and rolls the door shut behind him, already berating himself for being such a tongue-tied idiot.

But a handful of hours later, he finds himself staring down at his phone in between biology and calculus, at a text from an unknown number saying _hey, it’s Alec_. Seconds later, another text rolls in: _I’m really sorry about this morning_.

Nolan nearly drops his phone he’s in such a hurry to text back.

He bites his lip and rereads his own words— _you don’t have anything to apologize for_ —and feels that old, forgotten squirming thing in his chest give a slight twitch; that had been...possibly more honest than Nolan had really intended it to be. For a moment he considers texting something else, something innocuous and distracting—no need to erect a flashing sign for Alec that Nolan has some capital-“I” _issues_ he’s dealing with—but...he doesn’t, because Alec _doesn’t_ have anything to apologize for.

God, none of them ever did.

Shoving his phone back into his pocket, Nolan slams his locker shut and then yelps and sprints for his next class as the bell sounds. He slides into his seat twenty seconds later with an apologetic smile at Mrs. Taylor, quickly pulls out his book and notes and tries to look as studious as possible, even knowing that his face is red from exertion and embarrassment both. But once Mrs. Taylor has turned, frowning, back to the board, Nolan fishes his phone back out of his pocket and stares down at his text thread with Alec, at his own words—accepting but not exactly welcoming—and quickly taps out another reply before he can overthink it.

Alec responds almost immediately to his _got a new phone, huh?_ , saying: _yeah, Theo said something about not being my carrier pigeon :)._ Nolan bites back a laugh—he can perfectly picture Theo saying that, actually—and taps out another innocuous question, a genuinely interested _so what’d you end up doing today?_ , and that’s it; he and Alec spend the rest of the day texting back and forth, Nolan’s pulse jumping every time he feels his phone vibrate against his leg.

His good mood lasts until approximately fifteen seconds into lacrosse practice, when Liam—running offensive drills with the first line—slams hard enough into Anderson that Nolan can hear Anderson’s breath leave him in a rush even from twenty feet away. Nolan jerks to look at Corey, who’s already intercepting Liam, hands on his shoulders as he murmurs to him. The move is dual-purposed, Nolan realizes: beyond the impromptu counseling session, Corey’s put himself in between Liam’s flared gold eyes and the rest of the team.

He and Corey spend the rest of practice tag-teaming managing Liam, the two of them trading absolutely baffled looks over the top of Liam’s head every time Corey demands _what the hell is going on with you_ and Liam just snarls back that he’s fine. Finally practice wraps up, Nolan blowing out a sigh of relief, but they hit another snag when Liam refuses to leave the field—the rest of the team practically fleeing—and instead grabs the bag of practice balls and plants himself and his stick in front of the goal. Corey and Nolan stand and stare at him wordlessly as he starts firing off shots, very obviously deliberately ignoring them, and Nolan is already despairing for the net by the time Mason makes it down from the stands and pulls out his phone, tilts the screen to show Corey and Nolan the text he’s just sent to Theo, Theo’s affirmative reply below it.

Nolan isn’t sure about leaving Liam stewing in whatever mess he’s stewing in—not that he knows exactly how his continued presence is going to be helpful—but Theo is on his way, so after another few seconds of hesitation he turns and follows Mason and Corey as they head for the locker room. Then he trips over his own feet and nearly falls with a bitten-off yelp when Mason, his phone buzzing with another text from Theo, adds that Theo suggested the three of them head over to keep Alec company. Corey and Mason turn to look at him, and it doesn’t take long for their faces to split into wide grins, Mason exclaiming _I knew it!_

“Shut up, Mason,” Nolan mutters, coloring, but there’s no heat in it.

Thirty minutes later and Mason is following the letter but not really the spirit of Nolan’s request, his eyes dancing and his lips twitching in a poorly-disguised grin as Alec pulls open Theo’s apartment door and looks first, immediately, to Nolan, a helpless smile on his face. Mason keeps not really following it throughout the next few hours as he, Corey, and Nolan decamp to Theo’s table, spread out their homework, and quickly discover that Alec is some kind of biology savant, Alec leaning curiously over Nolan’s shoulder and answering the first question posed in their lab offhandedly. Eventually Nolan kicks Mason under the table, Mason biting back a yelp, but that really just leads to _Corey_ grinning, and doesn’t do much to dissuade Mason’s amusement or his good-natured—if a little salacious—interest in whatever he thinks is happening between Nolan and Alec.

But Nolan—Nolan doesn’t really mind, because while Alec maintains a careful and obviously deliberate minimum distance of a foot between them at all times, that minimum distance ends up becoming his _maximum_ , as well. After a moment of awkward indecision after his impromptu tutoring, Alec finally sits himself in the chair next to Nolan’s; by an hour in, Alec is sitting nearly on the edge of it as he leans in to get a look at the lab in front of Nolan. And while his hands stay buried firmly under his biceps, his palms wrapped around the curve of his own ribs, his shoulders stay relaxed and his expression stays easy, open; stays shyly intrigued, the times that Nolan catches Alec darting looks at him from beneath his ducked brow.

Theo kicks them out when he gets back a few hours later, looking sweaty and windswept but with his whole demeanor just a complete one-eighty from the air of total hopelessness that he’d been giving off that morning. Curiosity burns at Nolan, and clearly at Mason and Corey, too—what exactly did Liam and Theo get _up_ to that could turn both of their moods around so fast—but he packs up without contest, follows Mason and Corey out with a bitten-lipped _bye_ to Alec, stood leaning against the door and smiling back at him.

Nolan ends up staying up until the early hours of the morning anyway, laying in his bed and texting back and forth with Alec. He learns that Alec’s favorite color is green, that he’s never been able to stand shrimp, that once in chemistry class he covered half the room and half his fellow students in a foul-smelling slime after an experiment gone wrong.

He learns that Alec had never thought about dying before the night that he’d been bitten.

For a brief moment, a half-second, Nolan thinks about telling Alec about how it’d felt, stuck in the library staring down at the Beast; the first night that he hadn’t really been able to lie to himself anymore about all the weird shit that happened in Beacon Hills. He thinks about telling him that he had almost been more terrified the day that Monroe had looked down at him, sat on the edge of her guidance counselor’s desk like the _worst_ kind of joke, and said, _unless I need to worry about this happening again_ after Nolan had failed to kill Jiang and Tierney. He has half a text drafted about how Gabe’s hands had smelled of gunpowder and sweat the day he’d pressed them to Nolan’s face and said _I did it for you_ , how that had been all Nolan could think about when Gabe had led him into that quiet room in the hospital and _did what he was supposed to do_ by kicking the shit out of him.

But he deletes the text without sending it, lets Alec turn the conversation absently, obliviously away from his own confession and back to safer ground. Around about three A.M., Alec tells him _I asked Scott to stay,_ like he’s telling Nolan a secret, and even through the text—even through the distance, and their short acquaintance—Nolan can perfectly picture the wondering look on his face, like he’s not quite sure if he can trust his sudden good fortune. Nolan types out and deletes at least five responses—some of them too revealing, some of them too raw—before he finally just sends back: _I’m glad_.

He falls asleep lying on his side, his phone propped up on the pillow beside him; he falls asleep looking at the tiny blue text bubble containing Alec’s _me too_.

\---

Post Thanksgiving dinner, Derek gives Stiles exactly fifteen seconds of pressing his ear against the McCall front door, trying—probably in vain—to eavesdrop on Theo and Liam out on the porch, and then he snags the back of his collar and drags him, protesting all the while, away.

Beside Nolan on the couch, Alec watches the scene with a small grin, his hands in his lap and the thumb of his right hand running endlessly, repeatedly, over the nails of his left. After a beat he darts a somewhat-shy look at Nolan, like he’s not sure he’s supposed to be finding it funny; like he’s not sure he’s supposed to be privy to all this quite yet, the sight of the McCall pack unguarded and easy and free, like the best kind of secret. And Nolan, well.

He sympathizes.

Smiling slightly back, Nolan bites his lip and then has to drop his gaze down to his own lap, his pulse jumping. He wonders—not for the first time—if Alec’s learned yet to listen for that kind of thing, to harness his senses like that; wonders—not for the first time—if he _wants_ Alec to have already learned that skill. Setting the thought and the flutter in his chest aside, he makes himself look back up and tips his chin towards the front door.

“Stiles has a, ah... _theory_ , about Theo and Liam,” Nolan explains, “He’s convinced that any day now they’re going to come to their senses and, I quote, ‘stop torturing everyone with their ridiculous unresolved sexual tension.’”

Alec laughs quietly and glances back at the door, his expression going thoughtful as he says, “Why aren’t they together? I mean, I haven’t been around them that long, and even I’ve picked up on it.”

Nolan just sighs and makes a face almost undoubtedly like the one Mason had made when Nolan had asked a variant of that same question back in the hospital, “No one really knows, it’s a baffling and inexplicably continuing mystery.” Then he hesitates, debating, and after a beat adds, more seriously, “They’ve...got a lot a history. Not all of it is good.”

Alec considers this for a moment, his gaze drifting from the door to run over the other McCall pack members spread throughout the room, “Yeah, I picked up on that, too. Seems like...seems like everyone here has a lot of history.”

Almost immediately Alec blanches, and he jerks around to face Nolan, who tries to keep the sudden shock of feeling in his chest off his face and knows he’s failed from the way Alec brings his hands up to cover his mouth, only his eyes peeking out over the tips of his fingers.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t—” Alec starts, voice muffled by his palms.

Nolan isn’t exactly sure what Theo has or hasn’t told Alec about Nolan’s past, either in general or as it relates to the McCall pack, but he gets the feeling that Theo probably hasn’t said much; he thinks that Theo probably understands, better than most, what it means to live with ghosts of your own making, understands the weight of introducing those ghosts—or not—to another. If it came down to it, Nolan is willing to put money on the fact that, whatever Theo told Alec, it probably involved the words _his story to tell_.

And looking at Alec, dark eyes watching Nolan apologetically from over his fingers, Nolan finds himself thinking that someday—someday—Nolan is going to want to tell that story, introduce those ghosts, to Alec.

But today, he just shakes his head and gives Alec a shaky smile; resists the urge—narrowly—to reach forward and tug Alec’s hands away from his face, conscious of the way that Alec has spent the night maintaining his very careful and very deliberate physical distance between them, obviously still afraid of accidentally hurting him, and says:

“It’s fine. It’s—it’s _true_.”

Nolan can’t hold his gaze after that, lets it drift over the rest of the room: Lydia and Mason discussing what sounds like some obscure physics theory while sat on the loveseat and floor, respectively; Malia and Corey playing _spit_ while Scott watches, whooping every time one or the other takes a hand; Stiles and Derek now back from the foyer and bent over Stiles’ phone, trying to pick out a movie; the adults nothing but disembodied voices and laughter from the next room, the sound a comforting sort of white noise regardless.

And Liam and Theo still out on the front porch, maybe resolving their sexual tension but more likely just piling on more; two former mortal enemies now one obvious revelation from seeing just how far they’ve come.

“That’s—that’s what a pack _is_ ,” Nolan finds himself saying, the words coming almost as easily as the realization; Alec looks at him, expression soft, and open, and curious, his hands finally falling away from his face, “You’re right, everyone here has a lot of history. Some of it good, some of it bad. But we’re still here, together. That’s—that’s what it means to be a pack.”

Alec doesn’t respond immediately, just keeps studying Nolan through careful, thoughtful eyes, but then they crinkle up and he pulls his lips between his teeth, biting down on his soft smile.

“You’d, uh. You’d know better than I would,” He finally says, and Nolan jerks to meet his eyes, startled.

But then he plays his own words back through his head— _we’re still here, together_ ; the royal ‘we,’ Nolan thoughtlessly including himself as a member of the McCall pack—and feels the weight of that thought settle into his chest, his ribcage. It settles in right next to that squirming _thing_ that Nolan had lived with since his attack, since the McCall pack—the very people he’d tried to help wipe out—came unconditionally to his rescue. It settles in next to the words that’d been carved into the inside of his ribs that night— _the reason Brett and Lori are dead_ —and it doesn’t replace them, doesn’t wipe them away, but…

For the first time in weeks, in _months_ , Nolan feels his ribs expand to their full capacity; he closes his eyes and breaths deep.

When he opens his eyes, Alec is watching him, and the softness of his smile, the relaxed slope of his shoulders...so he _had_ learned how to harness his senses, at least to some degree, Nolan’s sudden turn in mood bleeding into him, too.

Nolan smiles at him, and says, “Yeah, I guess I would.”

Nolan is still thinking about that a little over a week later when Mason texts him to say that Scott and the others are back in town from their latest trip, and that he, Corey, and Liam were heading over to the McCall house. Glancing at the piles of Economics homework that Finstock will straight-up _murder_ him if he doesn’t complete to Finstock’s weirdly exacting standards, Nolan texts back to say he’s heading over, offers to pick up Alec when he learns that Theo had spent the night at the McCall house.

Alec meets him in the parking lot of Derek’s complex, clambers into the passenger seat with a grin and a heartfelt _thanks for the ride_. They spend the ride talking about everything and nothing, Nolan watching in distracted fascination while stopped at a stoplight as Alec absently flicks his claws in and out, one at time, his hands in his lap and the movements easy, smooth. It isn’t until someone honks behind him that Nolan realizes that the light has changed, and he jerks his attention back to the road, starts moving them forward and tries to ignore the way that his cheeks have warmed.

“Sorry,” Alec mumbles, and even though Nolan immediately tells him— _again_ —that he doesn’t have to apologize, Alec still curls his hands into fists in his lap and leaves them there, still and tense, for the rest of the ride.

When they step into the McCall house twenty minutes later, the whole first floor already smells like bacon and coffee, and Nolan can hear Mason and Corey talking in the kitchen. Liam is nowhere to be seen, but that mystery is solved quickly enough; Mason rolls his eyes and stops mid-whisk of the bowl of batter in his hand to point upwards to the guest bedroom above them.

“He took Theo up a mug of coffee,” Mason explains.

“Yeah, like ten minutes ago,” Corey adds, muttering; Mason elbows him in the side, but he’s grinning as he does it.

Nolan grins, too, and then he heads for the coffee pot. When he looks back to ask Alec if he wants some, though, Alec is hovering uncertainly in the doorway, his expression unsure and his hands back underneath his biceps. And suddenly Nolan can’t stand it; he gets a mug from the corner cabinet and pours Alec a cup, holding it out to him. Initially Alec tries to politely refuse, but Nolan doesn’t accept it, just raises his eyebrows and keeps insistently holding the mug out until Alec takes a halting step forward, then another, and takes it, first with one hand, and then with two, both of them wrapping carefully around the porcelain.

“Thanks,” He tells Nolan quietly, and there’s something in the way that he studies Nolan over the rim as he takes a small sip, something _knowing_ , and Nolan has to fight back another blush, turns back to the coffee pot and pours himself a cup.

They spend the next half hour or so chatting with Mason and Corey, with Scott and Malia when they stumble downstairs and Malia immediately starts trying to appropriate Mason’s bowl of chocolate chips. Derek shows up with a paper bag full of boxes of strawberries and other fruit, which Argent—coming downstairs with Ms. McCall—takes charge of, starts using his frankly frightening knife skills to turn into a fruit salad. Breakfast is almost ready by the time every supernaturally-sensed pack member glances up, and seconds later Nolan and the other humans understand why; Liam comes charging down the steps and into the room, two mugs of coffee in his hands and Theo hot on his heels.

Eyes gleaming, Malia abandons her campaign to steal the rest of the chocolate chips while Mason isn’t looking and snags Liam around the waist, ignoring his laughing protest as Theo takes advantage and reclaims his coffee. Their impromptu battle of wills apparently settled, Theo takes a seat across from Derek and next to Corey, Liam dropping into a chair on Nolan’s right and nudging him with a grin. Malia takes the chair on Alec’s other side, which—as Scott, Ms. McCall, Mason, and Argent finish bringing the last of the food and beverages to the table and the last of the elbow room disappears—causes Alec to scootch his chair another few inches closer to Nolan; Nolan would almost suspect a conspiracy if Malia’s attention wasn’t entirely on the platter of bacon that Corey had just passed to Theo.

As breakfast winds down, Nolan starts gathering up plates and mugs, accepts Ms. McCall’s appreciative thanks and hip-checks Mason’s chair back in when he tries to stand, reminds him that he and Corey cooked. When he gets to the sink and sets his armful of dishes down, though, he finds Alec behind him with another pile of plates and silverware. Alec’s lips flicker in a grin and he shrugs when Nolan frowns at him, so after a beat Nolan bites back his own smile and starts rinsing off dishes, loading them into the dishwasher.

Between the two of them they get the dishwasher loaded and the too-large or too-awkward dishes cleaned and set out to dry, the pack conversation continuing with and around them as they work. They only suffer one near-mishap when Nolan—hands slippery with soap suds and water—goes to take a plate from Alec and their hands brush. Alec’s werewolf reflexes kick in and he manages to rescue it when Nolan’s fingers spasm at the touch, startled, Nolan realizing with an instant jolt that it’s the first time they’ve ever touched, what with Alec’s unspoken but carefully enforced physical separation policy.

Luckily Alec doesn’t seem to notice anything strange, just hands the plate back to him, and this time when their fingers brush, Nolan manages to keep hold of the slick dish. When he looks up, cautiously curious, Alec is looking back, expression determined, if a little...terrified. Nolan realizes he’s staring when a peel of laughter from the table snaps him out of it, and he jerks and turns back to the sink, finishes rinsing off the plate and adding it to the dishwasher. But after that he finds himself hyperaware of Alec’s heat—as if he wasn’t _before_ —bleeding into his side, has to concentrate that much harder on what he’s doing.

He and Alec are just finishing up when Argent gives Scott a look and Scott groans, covers his face with his hands and mutters, “You’re right.”

Nolan’s not really sure what Argent is right about until Malia makes a face and Derek and Theo start climbing to their feet, and then a shock of ice runs through him as he remembers—Scott and the others had been out hunting for signs of Monroe. Back in Beacon Hills and with a full night’s sleep, they needed to head to Theo’s and update his giant map, try and figure out their next steps.

Nolan is still standing at the sink, previous good mood fading as he thinks about Monroe, which leads to him thinking about Rossler and Preston, which leads to him thinking about the _trial_ , and he jumps a bit when Theo says Alec’s name, Alec also jumping beside him. When Nolan—and Alec—look up at Theo, he jerks his chin towards the door, to where Scott, Malia, Derek, and Argent are heading to their cars.

“Right, sure,” Alec says, and gives Nolan a reluctant smile before heading after them.

“We should probably work on Finstock’s crazy assignment, shouldn’t we,” Mason says after they’ve disappeared, though he probably couldn’t sound less enthusiastic about it if he _tried_.

Corey and Liam—still at the table—both groan, Liam dropping his head onto his folded arms dramatically, Ms. McCall snorting a laugh as she stands to head back upstairs. But Mason’s right, and they really should do Finstock’s assignment, especially because Liam, Corey, and Nolan have no desire to run endless sprints come Monday’s practice if they don’t, so they agree to reconvene at Liam’s house in an hour, everyone needing to run home and get their stuff.

Argent, Scott, Malia, and Derek are gone by the time Nolan steps outside to head for his car, but Theo and Alec are still at Theo’s truck, Theo rooting around the back seat for something while he and Alec idly talk. The second Alec realizes that Nolan is outside, though, he murmurs something to Theo and jogs over to Nolan, Theo’s head coming up and peering after him, clearly intrigued. Also fairly intrigued, Nolan pauses in opening his door and lets Alec come to a stop a few feet away from him, start fidgeting from foot to foot.

“Alec?” Nolan finally prompts gently, when Alec has opened and closed his mouth several times but failed to actually say anything.

“Go out with me,” Alec suddenly blurts out.

Nolan blinks at him, taken aback; over Alec’s shoulder, Theo is also blinking, the unapologetic _eavesdropper_. Dragging his attention back to Alec, Nolan blinks at him again and feels slightly comforted by the poleaxed look on Alec’s _own_ face; he hadn’t exactly looked overwhelmingly confident five seconds ago but now he mostly looks like he’s going to be sick.

“I mean, um,” Alec tries to continue, and he’s clearly trying to think of some way to recover, but Nolan cuts him off, surprising himself some as he does it.

“Yes,” Nolan tells him, then again, when _Alec_ blinks at _him_ , “Yes.”

Alec stands there in silence for a few more seconds, like he maybe hadn’t thought this far ahead—Nolan has to resist the urge to look over his shoulder at Theo again, sure that Theo is peanut-gallerying it up—but then Nolan’s answer finally seems to penetrate. He nods once, sharply, and brings his hands up between them, closes them into loose fists and raises and lowers them once, like punctuation.

“Okay,” He finally says, aiming for firm and in control and getting at least forty-percent there, “Okay, great. Really great.”

Nolan waits, but there doesn’t seem to be anything else forthcoming, so he gently prods, his own heart racing but Alec’s complete clumsiness somehow comforting, somehow helping him find his own footing,  “Did you...have something in mind?”

Alec pales some like he’d just realized he’s forgotten a necessary element to his question, or an answer to an important test, and Nolan has to bite back a laugh, can’t fully stifle his wide, amused grin.

“How about we figure it out later,” Nolan offers, and this time does laugh when Alec nods eagerly.

“Yes, okay, good plan,” He agrees, his cheeks red with embarrassment at his own less-than-suave moves but his smile wide, “But, um. But, Saturday? This Saturday?”

“Yeah,” Nolan agrees, feels his own eyes crinkle as his and Alec’s smiles seem to feed each other’s, “Yeah, this Saturday.”

“Okay,” Alec repeats, helplessly, “Okay, great.”

“Alright, loverboy, we have to get moving,” Theo suddenly yells, looking both amused and impatient when Nolan and Alec both jerk to look at him.

Alec stares at Theo for a moment longer, mouth open like he was maybe going to try to defend himself, and then he turns back to Nolan and simply asks, “Saturday?”

“Saturday,” Nolan confirms, and watches as Alec—after another few beats of hesitation—repeats _Saturday_ , nodding to himself, and starts walking backward towards Theo’s truck.

Even once he turns around to finish jogging towards the passenger door, Theo already sat in the driver’s seat, he keeps darting looks over his shoulder at Nolan until he reaches the door and climbs inside. Nolan watches the truck disappear down the street, then turns back to his car and unlocks it, finishes climbing inside.

It’s at a stoplight ten minutes later—the same stoplight that he’d been caught, fascinated, by Alec’s careful control over his claws—that he finds himself wondering, idly, if this is what the _after_ of _figuring out the rest_ looks like.

He thinks, maybe, that it is.

\---

Of course, they don’t get a chance to _figure out_ so much as a venue before it all goes to shit.

Nolan doesn’t really know what he’s doing in the stairwell after Theo orders them to run, why he winds up fighting Alec so hard. All he knows is that the cracked-open look on Alec’s face when Alec had stopped and stared sightlessly upwards after that initial burst of gunfire had been telling, in its own way; significantly more revealing than Alec had probably wanted it to be. Alec had looked _gutted_ , and terrified, and heartbroken, and Nolan had had a single, terrified thought— _Theo’s hurt_ —and Nolan...he’d thought of Theo’s awful, festering bullet wound after Preston had shot him, and he’d had to do _something_.

Taking off up the stairwell hadn’t accomplished anything more than getting Alec to trip into him as Alec had run after him, and under any other circumstances Nolan would be tongue-tied and blushing at the full-body contact, but now he just gets his hands on Alec’s shoulders and tries to shove him away, tries to argue with him. But Alec is immovable—figuratively and literally, a part of Nolan realizing that this is the first time Alec has used his werewolf strength _against_ Nolan—and he won’t let Nolan go.

Until he _does_ , because there are three hunters running up the stairwell towards them and Alec moves immediately to put his body between them and Nolan and Mason, the latter of whom grabs Nolan’s arm and yanks him back down onto the nearest landing. Nolan lets him, though he has to resist the insane urge to lunge forward and try to pull Alec back too, instantly and all-consumingly terrified for _him_ , now.

Nolan recognizes Richmond’s voice the second the oily snake opens his lying mouth, and Mason must recognize that, because he slaps one hand over Nolan’s mouth and hisses, _Nolan, don’t_ , struggles with him when Nolan tries to rip his hand away. Richmond keeps talking to Alec as Nolan does, tone low and soothing and coaxing, and even though Nolan _knows_ Alec isn’t buying a word of it, he still fights to wrestle Mason’s hand away and snarl:

“You’re full of _shit_ , Richmond!”

Mason gives up on covering Nolan’s mouth and instead concentrates on grappling him further back into the corner of the landing, Nolan’s body pushing forward even while his mind screams _don’t make yourself a target, you idiot_.

But _christ_ , how many people are going to have to put their bodies between Nolan and his own mistakes?

Richmond sounds amused when he replies, “Nolan. Good to see you again.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Nolan snaps, Mason managing to push him back another few inches, “Rossler and Preston said they ‘just wanted to talk,’ too!”

And they had, seconds before Nolan had slammed the door in their faces and shot the lock home; seconds before they’d broken it open and proceeded to nearly beat Nolan to death in his own house. And Richmond’s play-acted regretful sigh as he spins a pretty lie for Alec or not, Nolan knows with all the certainty of the faithful that that’s exactly what’s going to happen here: that if someone doesn’t do _something_ , Richmond and his cronies were going to get their hooks into Alec, into Mason, like they’d already gotten their hooks into Theo.

And then, mid-bargain with Alec, Richmond says _just like we killed your friend Theo_ , and Nolan—even with his earlier, poisonous realization that something had _already_ happened to Theo—makes a punched-out, disbelieving noise and goes still, Mason beside him doing the same. _My body count just went up_ , Nolan thinks blankly, and then before he knows what he’s doing, he’s taking advantage of Mason’s distraction to rip loose of his restraining hands and lunge forward, his mind just one single, all-consuming thought: that Theo’s death was Richmond’s and the other hunters’ fault.

Below him, Alec makes a horrified sound and manages to catch Nolan before he makes it more than a few steps, slams him back against the corner of the landing just as one of the hunters brings his gun up. Nolan’s breath leaves him in a rush as he smacks into the wall and he watches, momentarily stunned, as Alec immediately whips his golden-eyed face and fanged mouth back forward to snarl at the encroaching hunters, his clawed hands leaving strips of sensation on Nolan’s arms as they drag away from him.

The hunters backpedal out of range of Alec’s clawed swipe, swearing, and then—Alec dropping flat with a started noise, Nolan doing the same as Mason yanks him down—Richmond brings up his gun and fires a single, deafening burst. _Shit, shit_ , Nolan thinks, arms covering his head and body curled into a ball as he tries to make himself as small a target as possible; as plaster dust rains down on his and Mason’s heads.

“Last chance, mutt,” Nolan hears Richmond warn Alec, but Alec—his only response is to _roar_ , Nolan’s whole chest going tight with immediate, conflicting feelings of terror and _awe_ at the sound.

Nolan knows better than to risk raising his head—not that Mason seems to believe him, one of his own hands on Nolan’s head and pressing down hard enough to hurt—but he _wants_ to, desperately, wants to know what’s happening to Alec as another burst of gunfire cuts through the air. He hears a dull thud like a body hitting a wall but no cries of pain, no wet sounds of bullets tearing through flesh—which Nolan is depressingly qualified to recognize—and then…

And then the gunfire abruptly stops, and gets replaced with the cut-off sounds of pained, startled gasps; of the wet, burbling sound of someone choking on their own blood.

Nolan scrambles to his knees, Mason beside him doing the same, and stares, shocked, at Theo, his shirt and jeans covered in sickly black blood and his hands drenched and dripping red, Richmond and the other two hunters dead and dying at his feet. _Oh my god_ , Nolan thinks, his eyes flicking, round and round, between the three oozing, festering bullet wounds on Theo’s left calf, right thigh, and right shoulder. _How is he even standing?_ , he wonders, and then, almost as if in answer, Theo’s left leg gives out and he falls against the wall, leaving a horrifying smear of wet black blood along the bricks as he does.

Theo heaves himself back upright in the next instant though and glares at Alec, snarls, “Come _on_ , we have to keep moving.”

Nolan can’t move, still too dumbstruck by Theo’s sudden reappearance and his condition, but Mason does; he gets a hand under Nolan’s arm and hauls him forcefully to his feet, pushes Nolan down the stairs before him. Alec looks away from Theo to stare at them as they come towards him, and then he seems to snap out of it, and he deliberately places himself in front of them, so obviously a guard—Nolan winces as his mind dredges up his earlier thought, _how many people are going to have to put their bodies between me and my own mistakes_ —and starts moving forward again, too.

It’s painfully obvious that Theo is lying when he responds to Mason’s _you’re hurt_ with _I’m fine_. It’s almost as painfully obvious as whatever the hell is going on between Alec and Theo when Theo stops them at the second floor landing, spins out his plan for getting them to his truck by going out one of the balconies in the apartments. Alec keeps _looking_ at him, his expression broken open and raw, and Theo keeps looking back, determined if absolutely stricken.

And then Theo makes it clear that he plans to sacrifice himself so that Mason, Nolan, and Alec can get away, and Nolan immediately protests, Mason and Alec doing the same just as loudly beside him. But Theo just cuts a hand through the air, the movement spattering the floor below him with droplets of black blood, and the visual is horrifying enough to snap Nolan’s jaw shut, Mason and Alec going instantly silent as well.

“You can’t help me,” Theo tells them, and Nolan _knows_ it isn’t an accusation, but he still bows under it like a blow, “The only thing you can do is get captured, too, and used against Scott and the others. But if you get out, you can go get help and come save my sorry ass.”

It’s clear he doesn’t believe it, and clear that _Alec_ doesn’t believe it, especially when Theo grimaces, his whole body locking up, and Alec moves to get a hand on him, likely to try and take his pain. But Theo jerks away, orders him to save his strength, and Nolan nearly begs him _don’t do this_ , almost isn’t sure which one he’s talking to.

But Alec just makes a pained noise and starts moving, rips open the door and then ushers Mason and Nolan through once he’s checked the hallway, and Nolan doesn’t have time to argue. He follows Alec and Mason to the apartment, looking back every couple of steps to see Theo staggering along after them. And every couple of steps Nolan nearly stops and goes back to help him, and each time Theo catches his eye and shakes his head weakly, tips his chin forward in a clear order for Nolan to keep moving.

Alec breaks them into the apartment and heads for the balcony, but Theo stops him, goes out to check it himself. It leaves Mason, Nolan, and Alec all standing around staring at each other, and Nolan doesn’t know what to _do_ , jerks to look at Mason when Mason goes to open his mouth, Alec’s expression going terrified across from him, terrified of having to answer whatever question Mason plans on asking; an answer in and of itself.

Theo reappears before Mason can ask it, gives them their marching orders. And seeing Theo’s blood-soaked clothes, the oozing and raw wounds underneath had been bad enough, but seeing him wrap a hand around the back of Alec’s neck and order him to leave Theo behind, to leave him to the hunters, is infinitely _worse._

And then, of course, it turns out that neither of those things have _anything_ on seeing Alec pull Theo’s forehead back to his own and quietly beg, in a voice low and broken enough that he’s almost definitely trying to keep Mason and Nolan from hearing him, _please don’t ask me to leave you here to die_.

But that’s exactly what Theo’s asking; it’s exactly what he asks.

Nolan follows Mason down over the balcony because he doesn’t know what else to do. He scrambles over the driver’s seat and into the passenger’s seat of Theo’s truck because he doesn’t know what else to do. And he turns around in his seat, Mason doing the same in the backseat, to watch Theo go down in the circle of hunters because he _doesn’t know what else to do_.

He turns back forward once Theo and the hunters are out of sight, Alec gunning it and immediately making for the rat’s nest of back roads out near the Preserve to lose the hunters that come tearing out of the parking lot after them. He sits there, numb and in shocked disbelief, until the tension in Alec finally breaks as they lose their pursuers and he all but slumps over the steering wheel, his breaths coming in short, harsh pants.

And that causes Nolan’s numbness to break, too.

“We have to turn around,” Nolan finds himself saying, his conviction only bolstered when Mason instantly agrees.

But Alec won’t listen, just keeps saying _no_ , and _we can’t_ , and _we have to get to Yreka_ , until Nolan can’t _take it_ anymore, and he suddenly lunges for Alec mid-negotiation by Mason. Alec yelps his name and gets a hand on his chest, fights to control the truck when the unexpected motion causes him to swerve. Nolan ignores that, and the horns going off around them, and orders him to turn around. Alec tries to argue, glancing between him and the road with a heartbroken expression, but Nolan doesn’t _care_ ; Theo _can’t_ die for them.

He can’t die for Nolan.

Except, it turns out: he already has.

Nolan stares at Alec from his place against the car door, barely feeling the throb of pain from where his head had connected with the window after he’d forced Alec to shove him back or risk losing control of the truck. _He’s already dead, Nolan_ , he hears Alec say again, and doesn’t even need to listen to Alec’s halting explanation to Mason to know it’s true; it’s there all over Alec’s _face_.

It’d been all over Theo’s.

 _Please don’t ask me to leave you here to die_ , Alec had said, and Nolan had thought Alec had meant _don’t ask me to leave you here to be_ captured _,_ but Alec and Theo had known, they’d both known. Nolan feels every muscle in his body go boneless as he realizes that it’s _over_ , that Alec is going to get them to Shohreh safely—because Theo had asked him to, his _dying wish_ —and that Scott—Mason filling him in slowly, painfully over the phone—is going to go back to Beacon Hills and find Theo’s body.

Find his _corpse_ , just like Theo had advised Nolan against all those weeks ago— _you want to make it up to them? Start by making sure they don’t have to find your corpse—_ his fingers wrapped carefully around Nolan’s wrist and his eyes heavy with their own knowledge.

 _Please don’t ask me to leave you here to die_ , Alec had begged, and Nolan reaches forward in the sudden deafening silence of the truck cab, Mason hanging up his call with Scott, his head against the back of the front seat and his hand on Alec’s shoulder. Nolan reaches forward and takes Alec’s hand, Alec’s unspoken rules about their physical distance be damned, and pulls it down and off the steering wheel until their clasped hands are resting between them.

Then he turns his face into the window and mouths _please don’t ask me to leave you here to die_ , and feels the words carve themselves into his ribs, just below _the reason that Brett and Lori are dead_.

\---

Nolan doesn’t know why he fights with Shohreh, either.

Maybe it’d been the proprietary way that she’d stalked up to Alec and forced his head down, so casually uncaring of Alec’s careful rules of physical distance. Maybe it’d been the way that she’d stared at the streak of black—Theo’s poisoned _blood_ , Mason and Nolan flinching just as hard as Alec at the revelation—on the back of his neck and then said, so cool and so calm and so collected, _so Theo is dead then_.

Or maybe it’d been the way that she’d said _what a stupid way to die_.

Intellectually, Nolan knows it’s a good thing that Alec stops him before he can do more than take a few idiotic, threatening steps towards Shohreh. But he struggles against him anyway— _please don’t ask me to leave you here to die_ —and snarls at her, almost unable to feel it when Alec wraps around him, almost unable to hear it when Alec presses his mouth to Nolan’s ear and tells him _it’s grief, Nolan, it’s grief_ , over and over. Nolan—he just desperately needs her to _understand_ ; Theo had _died_ for them.

He doesn’t realize he’s been saying it aloud until he realizes that he’s staring straight at Alec as he does it, Alec’s expression cracking open and going raw like an open wound. Nolan feels his own expression twist in response, Alec’s hands heavy like weights, like brands on his chest, the back of his neck.

He’s still staring helplessly into Alec’s eyes when Shohreh speaks, says _then let’s make sure his sacrifice isn’t wasted_ , voice steel-cored and full of promise. Alec turns to look at her and Nolan watches as his expression flickers with something like...like relief, maybe, like closure; they were going to have to put Theo in the ground but Shohreh was going to help them put Monroe in it right along with him.

That bitter, awful silver lining—threatening as it was to maybe strangle them all—is the only thing that lets Nolan let Alec go when Shohreh orders him and Mason to follow her into the kitchens to eat something, orders Alec to shower. Even still Nolan catches Alec’s hand when he goes to touch Theo’s blood on the back of his neck at Shohreh’s delicate reminder, tells him _don’t_ in a voice he barely recognizes, shredded and raw. Alec stares at him for a beat and then Shohreh makes her promise— _I won’t let them out of my sight_ —and Alec swallows, his eyes flickering gold, and squeezes the hand he’s still got on Nolan’s shoulder, the hand he’d let Nolan wrap his own around.

“I’ll—I’ll see you guys in a few,” Alec tells him and Mason, but what Nolan hears is Alec realizing what Nolan has realized, what he’d spent the past few months living: that they'd managed to keep their friends from having to find their corpses, and now they were, all of them, going to have to figure out the rest.

So Nolan lets him go, and follows Shohreh into the kitchen, Mason behind him. She gets them sat at an oversized granite island and starts to move throughout the kitchen, though Nolan doesn’t bother to watch. He just braces his elbows on the edge of the counter and covers his face with his hands, tries to focus on breathing, on Mason’s heat from where he’d pulled his chair close to Nolan’s own; on trying to hear the sound of the shower, Alec somewhere in the sprawling ranch house washing Theo’s blood off his skin. He’s so focused on that, that he jumps when he feels the edge of a dish brush his forearm.

When he raises his head, there’s a bowl of steaming soup in front of him, another in front of Mason. Nolan glances up and spots the saucepan on the stove, the empty tin can beside it. _Chicken noodle soup_ , Nolan thinks, looking down at the bowl in front of him, and nearly makes an automatic and nearly hysterical crack about cliches, but the words stick in his throat and he has to swallow several times to try and dislodge them, doesn’t really succeed. Shohreh’s eyes when he looks up and accidentally catches them are the worst kind of soft, sympathetic without pity or blame, and Nolan immediately looks back down, picks up the spoon stuck in the bowl before him for lack of anything better to do.

But he can’t do it.

He tries to take a few bites, tries to force himself to eat, because intellectually he _knows_ Shohreh’s right and even if he can’t consciously tell, he needs food, but the taste is cloying, the noodles and chicken and vegetables like flavorless lumps, and eventually he drops the spoon back down. Beside him, Mason grimaces—he’d been slowly but steadily forcing his way through his own bowl, like the careful, systematic movements could help him carefully and systematically navigate his way through this new, post-tragedy world—and he reaches out, nudges Nolan’s bowl gently, but pointedly.

“You’ve got to eat, Nolan,” He presses quietly, “I know—I know how screwed up everything is right now, but punishing yourself for what happened isn’t going to change anything.”

Nolan jerks to stare at him, his words so very close to those that Theo had used all those weeks ago when Nolan had tried to refuse his help with the pain from Rossler’s beating: _punishing yourself won’t change anything_. Expression twisting and his eyes starting to burn, Nolan covers his face with his hands as he feels his shoulders start to shake. Mason makes a soft, distressed sound and Nolan curls harder into himself, his fingers sliding back to clutch at the back of his head, his face buried in the crooks of his elbows and braced on the hard, unforgiving stone of the island.

 _Theo is dead_ , he thinks. Punishing himself wouldn’t change anything because Theo was already dead: dead of wolfsbane poisoning from the shots he’d taken keeping the hunters from getting to Mason, Alec, and Nolan, or dead from the shots he would have taken from the thwarted hunters in the parking lot looking for an easy victim to vent their frustration on. Nolan opens his mouth in a wordless cry against his bicep and digs his fingers harder into his hair, his nails starting to sting against his scalp.

And then he jerks, startled, when a cool hand comes down on the back of his neck and the pain of even that small hurt flows away. _Shohreh_ , Nolan realizes without lifting his head, and the agony tearing him up inside isn’t the kind of pain that she can take, but Nolan fumbles one of his hands down until he can cover hers and presses it hard against his skin anyway as he shakes harder.

His white-knuckled grip on her is the only reason he feels her sudden tension, her attention caught by something happening elsewhere in the house. A surge of adrenaline rips through Nolan and he straightens, looks at Mason to find him looking at Shohreh, her eyes narrowed as she stares out towards the living room.

“What is it?” Nolan demands, uncaring of his cracked and cracking voice.

Shohreh glances down at him, frowning, “Alec is getting a phone call.”

Nolan’s up and out of his seat, Mason hot on his heels, almost before she’s even finished speaking. He’s not sure what exactly he’s afraid of—someone else being hurt, maybe; another corpse to find—but the terror makes him clumsy as he skids to a graceless stop as he catches sight of Alec just exiting the main hallway, Mason just as uncoordinated beside him, nearly tripping into Nolan as he, too, stops and stares. Alec hasn’t answered the phone, is just holding it in his hand and staring back at them, but then he jolts and fumbles at it, brings it up to his ear, says _yeah, Scott, it’s me, sorry, I—_

But then he stops, his face immediately losing all its color, and he breathes _what_ in a completely stunned, blank voice. But it’s what he says after that sucks all the oxygen out of the room, out of Nolan’s lungs, _Theo can’t be alive_ , but Alec’s saying it like a denial, a contradiction.

Like Theo is, in fact, alive.

Nolan jerks to look at Mason, who looks back at him, equally wide-eyed. Hope—insidious and unstoppable—takes root in Nolan’s chest and he turns back to Alec, about to demand more, an explanation, anything, and then Alec stumbles and collapses against the hallway wall, slides down it until he ends, sprawled, in a heap on the floor.

“Alec!” Nolan yells, and runs to him, drops to his knees beside him while Mason does the same on his other side.

He reaches out, presses a hand to Alec’s knee, his shoulder, tries to catch his eyes, but Alec just makes a wounded noise and curls into himself. Alarmed, Nolan tightens his grips, about to _yank_ Alec into looking at him, and then Shohreh snaps _move_ and drops to her knees in front of Alec, too, snatches the phone from his hand and—after telling Scott to _shut up for a second_ —thrusts it at Mason, who takes it automatically.

Nolan’s caught between two conflicting, equally strong impulses as he simultaneously watches Shohreh roughly grab Alec’s face and start to drag him out of his self-recrimination, and as he tries to hear Mason as he talks to Scott, the earlier desperate possibility that Theo had lived after all pulling at him. But then Alec says it to Shohreh— _Theo is alive, Monroe healed his wolfsbane poisoning_ —and Nolan half-collapses as his breath leaves him in a rush, the only things holding him up the fingers he has wrapped in Alec’s shirt, around his knee.

He barely notices Alec losing control of the shift, barely hears Shohreh as she keeps telling Alec things he already knows but doesn’t want to admit. Instead he sees himself back in that apartment with Theo blood-soaked and half-dead, Alec pulling Theo’s forehead to his own and begging _please don’t ask me to leave you here to die_.

And Alec _hadn’t_ , because Theo is alive.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Nolan gasps out as Shohreh pulls away, Alec’s shift fading; he surges forward and ends up with his forehead pressed against Alec’s temple, absently notes Mason surging close on Alec’s other side, “It _wasn’t_. I’m sorry I said it would be earlier, I didn’t mean it.”

And Alec just turns his head so that his forehead presses against Nolan’s own, pulls him and Mason closer. Nolan closes his eyes against the fierce burn of tears he can feel and just concentrates on Alec’s warmth, on Mason’s fingers coming around Alec’s back to twist too-tight, perfectly-tight in Nolan’s sleeve. And maybe Scott’s not willing to treat Theo’s recovery like a sure thing, his explanation hedged and tentative if so, so painfully full of banked hope: Nolan knows better. _Watch_ , he tells Alec, tells Mason, _he’s going to make it purely out of spite_.

And spite or not—Theo does.

\---

Contrary to everything else he’s done in the last twenty-four hours, Nolan knows exactly why he breaks into Alec’s apartment.

Or, well. He does right up until he hears Alec start to roll open the door, and then he panics and forgets every vital, necessary, urgent reason he’d had and rockets to his feet, watches Alec get tangled in the door handle when Alec startles at Nolan’s sudden movement, and winds up filling the awkward silence with a stab at dark humor that falls almost immediately flat.

It’s just—he’d spent the whole ride back to Beacon Hills riding high on the knowledge that Theo was alive, that Scott and Liam and the others had saved him, that even though Alec had done as Theo had asked and left Theo behind to die, Theo _hadn’t_. For the few hours it’d taken them to get back to the hospital, Nolan had barely been able to sit still, had kept turning around in his seat to talk with Mason, neither of them ever saying it but their every exclamation, every nonsense observation punctuated with the same disbelieving subtext: _Theo is alive_.

And _Alec_.

He’d kept smiling at Alec, kept reaching out to touch his arm, his shoulder; his leg, once, when he’d missed his arm and landed on his thigh, instead. And Alec had smiled back, and joked back, and had pressed into every one of Nolan’s touches, and the truck cab— _Theo’s_ truck cab—had become like it’s own separate bubble, a safe haven, out of time and untouched by the rest of the world.

But the rest of the world had still been there, and the second they’d all stepped out into the parking lot at the hospital, it’d come crashing back in.

If Nolan could have gotten away with it, he’d have pressed himself up against Alec’s side and stayed there, the rest of the pack and their well-meaning concern be damned. But the second they’d stepped through the hospital doors’, Alec’s whole body had gone tight and near-vibrating with tension, his eyes too-bright even in the harsh fluorescent lighting, and Nolan had seen—had _known_ —that Alec was too close to losing control of the shift, and had immediately imposed his _own_ rules of physical distance between them, unwilling to make himself just one more thing Alec had to try to manage.

It’d gotten better as the hours had rolled on. Or it’d gotten _different_ , anyway, because by the time Ms. McCall and Dr. Geyer had come out to tell them that Theo was going to pull through, by the time that everyone had ventured in to see him, still weak and pale but looking stronger with every passing rise and fall of his heart monitor, every rise and fall of his chest, Nolan had felt exhaustion start to eat away at the relief in his chest, uncovering the words carved permanently into his ribs. _The reason Brett and Lori are dead_.

And just below them, even though they’d turned out to be failed prophecy: _please don’t ask me to leave you here to die_.

Originally, Nolan had told himself that he’d left with Mason and Corey because Alec had asked him to. But alone on Mason’s couch, Mason and Corey asleep upstairs, Nolan had laid underneath a blanket and had watched the last twenty-four hours replay in his head like a filmstrip, from his idiotic behavior in the stairwell with Richmond, to the dagger-sharp accusations he’d hurled at Alec in the truck during their escape, to his half-hysterical confrontation with Shohreh at the ranch house in Yreka.

And once he’d started, he couldn’t stop.

His first session with Monroe, the way she hadn’t even had to _try_ to worm her way into his head; he’d thrown the door wide open. The mob scene with Liam, where Nolan had hit him, over and over again, Mason trapped by several restraining arms and forced to watch. The police station. The zoo. The school. The hospital.

 _It wasn’t me_ , Nolan had told himself, back in the immediate, terrible aftermath of Monroe’s flight from Beacon Hills. He’d seen the stone dust and coal-black ashes still jammed into corners and hard-to-clean edges of the library, all that was left of the Anuk-ite after Scott and the others killed it, and he’d told himself, _it was that thing_. He’d stayed out of the way of Liam and Mason and Corey, had forced himself to forget the other supernaturals that Monroe had identified, had assured himself that if he just kept his head down and didn’t make trouble, that trouble wouldn’t find him like it had before.

But the trouble he’d found before had been his own. He’d _made_ it. He’d _caused_ it. He’d let the fear in his heart—the powerlessness he’d felt staring down at the Beast and thinking _I’m going to die_ —grow, spreading through each of his veins like strangling vines.

And he’d done that, all of that, before Monroe had ever picked up so much as a _book_ in her demented quest for vengeance.

 _It was me_ , Nolan had realized, had _admitted_ , staring up at the ceiling of the Hewitt family living room, and he’d just needed to tell someone; to tell _anyone_.

He’d needed—he’d _wanted_ —to tell Alec.

So he’d picked up Theo’s truck keys from where Corey had left them on the end table next to the couch, and he’d driven—the late morning sunlight just a complete mindfuck, like the events of the last twenty-four hours hadn’t happened at all—to Derek’s complex. He _had_ given into the weird but unignorable superstition that had bloomed the second he’d pulled into the lot, and had parked as far away from the spot Theo’s truck had occupied when they’d fled as possible.

Realizing Alec wasn’t home had momentarily derailed his plans, a jarring sour note in his otherwise perfectly planned vision. Nolan had stood, conflicted, in front of Alec’s door, and then he’d remembered—they’d only had seconds yesterday, hadn’t they? They’d barely stepped out Alec’s door before Theo had jerked to look at the elevator doors with his face a blank mask of horror, and then had gotten his hands on the back of Mason’s and Nolan’s necks, had practically thrown them down the hallway. There hadn’t been _time_ to lock the door.

So after another few seconds of hesitation, Nolan had carefully slid the door open, stepped inside, and carefully slid it closed after him. He’d stood in the middle of Alec’s living room—filled with the random mismatch of furniture that the pack had helped him pick out during their Lydia-supervised trip to IKEA—and then, for lack of anything better to do, he’d gone to the couch and sat.

The confession-stroke-argument he’d planned; it’d been the whole reason he’d broken-in to begin with. The sex—whatever the rest of the McCall pack might choose to believe once they collectively get past Theo and Liam finally getting their shit together and realize that Alec and Nolan had, too—he hadn’t. But Alec had said _you should let them forgive you_ , had said, _you should forgive yourself_ , and Nolan hadn’t been able to help himself, because he’d _believed_ him.

But that part—that’s not for the others; at least not yet.

Nolan is still thinking about that—about how Alec had looked, pressed up against his door with his eyes flared and his mouth fanged, held in place by Nolan’s hand against his chest as Nolan got him off—when he steps out of Theo’s bathroom later that night and nearly runs directly into Theo himself. Theo sidesteps him easily but reaches out anyway to steady him when Nolan startles and trips over his own feet, Theo’s mouth quirking up in an amused grin. Straightening, Nolan mutters out a thanks, feels himself blushing, and then blushes _harder_ when he realizes that Theo—second only to Derek in the effortless scenting of emotions, and maybe not even second after all—probably could smell _exactly what he’d just been thinking about_.

But Theo—thank christ—doesn’t say anything about it, just drops his hands from Nolan’s biceps, his smile softening into something less cheeky and more somber. Down on the first floor, Nolan can hear the rest of the pack talking, laughing; squawking, in Liam’s case, as he tries to steal some of Derek’s orange chicken and apparently gets headlocked for his trouble. It’s a comforting sort of white noise, a steady, rising tide of sound and presence and _life_ that slowly but steadily washes away the awful, hollow silence that had taken over Nolan’s head, his ribcage, when he’d thought they’d left Theo behind to die—one way or another—in the parking lot.

And Theo must smell those thoughts, too, because his expression twists with regret and he closes his eyes briefly, drops his head and looks away from Nolan before bringing his head back up and meeting his eyes again, “I know I didn’t say it before, but, well. I’m not sorry for saving your lives—” He pauses and looks briefly defiant, and Nolan quickly realizes he’s missing some context, and just as quickly lets it go, “—but I am sorry for...I don’t know. I’m just—just sorry.”

Nolan feels something in his chest twist as he stares back at Theo, his throat going tight, “Must be a supernatural thing, apologizing for things that don’t need apologizing for.”

Theo’s brow furrows and he cocks his head, clearly confused. Then his expression clears and he murmurs, “Ah. Something Alec said, I presume.”

“Pretty much constantly,” Nolan answers, lips flickering in a smile as he does, softening the sting.

Humming thoughtfully, Theo tilts his head towards his aptly-christened Impractical Staircase and says, “You should head back down if you actually want to eat. From the sound of it, Scott’s about to have to referee a Liam and Malia showdown for the last eggroll.”

Nolan nods a little and ducks past Theo, lips quirking in a quick, embarrassed smile as he does. He’s almost to the staircase when he stops, pivots on his heel and turns back to Theo, who’d already started to head into the bathroom.

“Hey, Theo,” Nolan calls out, softly enough that Theo will hear him but the others—distracted as they are—probably won’t. He waits until Theo stops in the doorway and looks back at him to continue, “You should, um. You should think about following your own advice.”

Theo stares at him, visibly confused, and then he laughs quietly, head dropping down on a suddenly boneless neck and his body slumping against the doorway as he apparently remembers: _you want to make up for what you did to them? Start by making sure they don’t have to find your corpse, figure out the rest after._ He glances back up at Nolan from underneath a ducked brow, lip between his teeth but his mouth curled in rueful smile, and then he straightens up against the door jamb and leans his head back against it, studies Nolan thoughtfully.

“You seem to be doing pretty well at it,” He replies, and Nolan feels his mouth drop open in surprise, “What do you say, got any tips?”

Nolan stares at him for a moment longer and then closes his mouth, automatically glances sideways when a burst of laughter from downstairs catches his attention. Liam had lost the match for the last eggroll, apparently; Nolan can hear Malia crowing in victory, can hear the rest of the pack as they cheer her on, as Scott offers Liam a wonton in condolence. The apartment is full, and put back to rights to the best of the pack’s abilities from the hunters’ ruthless ransacking of it, and the air is thick with celebration, and raw joy, and underneath all that, a knowing, heavy _gratitude_ ; everyone perfectly aware of what they’d almost lost.

“I think you’re doing alright, yourself,” Nolan finds himself saying, and he looks back up at Theo in time to catch his expression flicker in surprise.

It softens some as Theo seems to chew over Nolan’s assertion, until finally he nods a little to himself, expression thoughtful and easy and—and _peaceful_ ; Nolan’s not sure he’s ever seen it—seen _Theo_ —so peaceful.

He’s still marveling at it when Theo suddenly says, “You might be right. But how about you and me, we keep working on figuring out the rest.”

Nolan meets Theo’s gaze, steady and sure, and feels a smile start to overtake his face, wide and entirely beyond his control. He pulls his lips between his teeth but it doesn’t do shit, just crinkles his eyes further, Theo’s smile across from him wide and growing wider, too.

“Yeah,” Nolan answers finally, “Yeah, let’s do that.”

\---

Derek’s the one who kicks everyone out of Theo’s apartment around one in the morning, his reasoning obvious even without supernatural senses; Theo looks drained, listing some against Liam’s side, his eyelids heavy.

To absolutely no one’s surprise, Liam stays; he gets Theo’s arm under his shoulder and starts escorting him upstairs, one hand extended in a preemptive middle-finger before anyone— _Stiles_ —so much as opens their mouths. Lydia and Stiles follow Derek up to his apartment, Scott and Malia head back to Scott’s, and Mason and Corey head to Mason’s.

And Nolan, well.

Nolan follows Alec back across the hallway to his place, Alec’s hopeful expression—which he’d been doing an absolutely terrible job of trying to hide—breaking into a shy, pleased smile when he realizes.

Stepping inside, Nolan turns to face him as Alec rolls the door closed, and—importantly, deliberately— _we forgot to lock your door when we were fleeing for our lives earlier, so_ —locks it. Alec is clearly on unfamiliar ground—not that Nolan isn’t—and he can’t seem to meet Nolan’s gaze when he’s done, just colors some and starts looking around the apartment as he mumbles:

“Are you—are you tired? I know we slept this afternoon, but, well, _long day_ doesn’t really cover it and—”

Nolan can’t help it; he cuts him off with a kiss, his hands coming up to hold the sides of Alec’s face, Alec’s hands coming up to grip his wrists automatically; gently. A few seconds later and Alec makes a small, frustrated noise and turns his head slightly, though he keeps it close enough that Nolan can feel Alec panting against his cheek. His fingers—wrapped so carefully around Nolan’s wrists—spasm some, like Alec had just fought back the urge to tighten them, but he doesn’t pull them back, or away; Nolan can feel the sides of the claws of Alec’s thumbs resting lightly against the skin of his inner wrists.

“If I say _sorry_ you’re going to get mad at me, aren’t you,” Alec says, and his words aside, it’s not really a question.

Nolan grins and twists his head until he can press a kiss to the edge of Alec’s fanged mouth and answers fondly, “Yeah, probably.”

Alec laughs quietly, but when he turns back into Nolan’s kiss, opens his mouth to let Nolan lick inside, his teeth are blunt. His hands slide from Nolan’s wrists down across his arms, wrap around his shoulders and pull him in, and then he pivots on his heel, gets them turned so that he can back Nolan up against the door in a reversal of their earlier position, one hand braced on the door beside Nolan’s head. Moaning, Nolan drops his hands from Alec’s head to his back and slips under the back of his shirt, curls his fingers and scrapes them up Alec’s spine to his neck.

Gasping out a curse, Alec rips himself away from Nolan’s mouth and buries his head against Nolan’s shoulder instead, his hips jerking against Nolan’s and his whole body shuddering. So Nolan does it _again_ , and has to close his eyes and pant out his own curse when he hears the sharp sound of Alec’s claws scratching at the metal of the door as Alec curls his braced hand into a fist.

“If I didn’t know better I’d say you were enjoying making me lose control of the shift,” Alec mutters, pulling back some to look at him, his eyes fading from gold to brown and his teeth losing their sharp edges. Then he squints at Nolan for a beat, and his eyes widen and he leans back some as he accuses, “You _are_ enjoying it!”

“Yeah,” Nolan agrees helplessly, reaching out for Alec to try and keep hold of him while he tries to explain, Alec’s expression twisting some, uncertain, “But it’s not—it’s not whatever you’re thinking.”

“You don’t know what I’m thinking,” Alec counters, but he leans back in some, his hips—and the evidence of his undiminished arousal—coming to rest back against Nolan’s own.

“No, I don’t,” Nolan admits, “But it’s just—it’s who you are. All of it.” Nolan reaches forward and up until his fingers are hovering just over Alec’s mouth, but doesn’t press them in until Alec turns into the touch, opens his jaw to let Nolan trail featherlight fingertips over his blunt teeth, “And I want that. You. All of _you_.”

Alec stares at him for a moment, and then _he_ surges forward into Nolan, Nolan’s fingers jerking free as Alec crushes his mouth to Nolan’s, licks inside. Groaning, Nolan opens his mouth wider, tangles his own tongue with Alec’s briefly and then licks it forward, touching it carefully, but purposefully, to Alec’s teeth. But they’re blunt, and Nolan marvels at that, can’t help pulling back some to look at Alec in surprise.

And gets an even bigger surprise, because Alec’s eyes are flared even though his mouth isn’t fanged.

“Alec…” Nolan breathes, reaching forward to touch his fingertips to the thin skin under Alec’s left eye.

“Don’t give me too much credit,” Alec counters ruefully, bringing one of his own hands between them and wiggling his fingers demonstratively, the tips of his deadly claws glinting in the light.

But Nolan just grins and pulls him forward into another kiss, Alec’s hands landing on either side of his head to brace himself. Nolan’s already thinking about what he wants to do next, his mind already half made up to go to his knees, when Alec suddenly pulls away from his mouth and presses his forehead to Nolan’s, groans softly.

“Let me take you upstairs,” He pleads, “Not that you’re not giving me all sorts of new and probably unhealthy fixations related to doors, but upstairs is where I always pictured—”

He cuts himself off, but Nolan is ninety-percent sure Alec had been about to say _where I always pictured us doing this_ , and he groans and gets his hands back on the sides of Alec’s face, pulls him back in. Alec lets him for a few long, slow seconds, and then he yanks himself away—fully away—and grabs one of Nolan’s wrists with human hands, starts tugging him towards the staircase up to the loft.

For half a second Nolan considers being difficult, pinning Alec to the back of the couch as they pass it or to the railing of the staircase, but he thinks _upstairs is where I always pictured—_ , and follows where Alec leads. They stumble up the stairs quickly enough, and the second Nolan finishes cresting the top Alec pulls him forward into himself, the two of them staggering back a few steps with the momentum even as Alec kisses him again.

Nolan keeps expecting him to pull away, keeps expecting to see his gold-bright eyes and fanged mouth twisting in a rueful grin, but Alec doesn’t; his teeth stay blunt, and if his eyes are flared, Nolan’s too focused on the slick strokes of his tongue, the pressure of his hand on the back of Nolan’s neck to notice. It drives up Nolan’s own arousal until he suddenly tangles his fingers in Alec’s shirt, starts tugging it upwards, wanting skin. Shoulders heaving with his panting breaths, Alec pulls back long enough to strip the shirt over his head, then immediately takes hold of the edges of Nolan’s, helps him yank it over his head quickly.

“Oh,” Nolan breathes when Alec wraps his arms back around Nolan’s shoulders and pulls him back in close, the feeling of bare skin to bare skin momentarily overwhelming.

It doesn’t help that Alec doesn’t return to kissing him, instead burying his face in Nolan’s neck and stroking his over tongue the dip of Nolan’s left collarbone; biting the bone there, gently, when he reaches its end. Then he pauses and leans back some to meet Nolan’s eyes, and Nolan is confused for a half-second before he feels the thumb of Alec’s left hand stroke slowly, carefully, over the thin white scar on Nolan’s neck. Nolan stares at him, feeling his breath coming faster and faster, and has to close his eyes and bite back a harsh noise when Alec leans in to touch his lips to the start of the scar and then traces them up, up until he comes to its end just under Nolan’s right ear. There, he presses a soft, deliberate kiss to the end of it, and Nolan surges forward into him, wraps his arms tight around Alec’s shoulders as he buries his face in the side of Alec’s neck in turn.

Alec holds him there for a few seconds, doesn’t move until Nolan does, until Nolan gets his hands in Alec’s hair and steers him into another kiss. The instant he’s sure he’s got Alec’s attention firmly distracted by his mouth, he drops his hands to the button of Alec’s jeans, pops the button.

The effect is instantaneous; Alec jerks back from the kiss, eyes flared and mouth fanged. His clawed hands—which he’d immediately yanked clear of Nolan’s bare shoulders—hover in the air between them, like Alec has no idea where to put them and no real brain power to put towards answering the question.

Nolan just grins and gets his fly undone, trails his hands up and over Alec’s hips until he can slip his fingers in between Alec’s briefs and his skin, start sliding both them and his jeans down and off. The whole time Alec just stares down at him through heavy-lidded, golden eyes, his mouth dropped open as he pants for breath, still-clawed hands coming up as he bends his arms and purposefully buries them in his own hair.

“Nolan, jesus,” He groans as his jeans finally hit the floor, Nolan immediately pressing forward, encouraging Alec to walk back some until the backs of his knees hit his mattress and he sits.

Nolan’s about to get one knee up by Alec’s hip, eyes on Alec’s hard cock and mind already eagerly whirring through thoughts, _this next_ , when Alec suddenly brings one of his hands forward and presses the back of it—the claws safely curled away from Nolan’s skin—to Nolan’s stomach.

“You,” Alec explains, voice just the slightest bit shaky, “You, too. Please.”

For a moment Nolan isn’t sure what he means, and then Alec trails the back of his hand down Nolan’s stomach until it rests, lightly but purposefully, over the swell of Nolan’s own hard cock, still trapped in his jeans. Alec glances up from where he’d followed his hands progress, eyes still golden but teeth blunt behind his open lips, and Nolan can’t help the urge that strikes him, buries his hands in Alec’s hair and tilts his head up so he can kiss him, deep and lingering.

And then he drops his hands to his own jeans and gets them undone, gets them shoved off along with his briefs.

The sound Alec makes when Nolan finally does climb into his lap spikes through Nolan and he presses closer, gasps and then moans when he feels Alec’s cock press against his own. He seeks out his mouth, Alec doing the same, Nolan’s hands scratching at Alec’s shoulders as they kiss, hips starting to move against each other almost without conscious thought. But Nolan doesn’t know where Alec’s hands are—they’re not on him—and he slides his hands over Alec’s back until he gets to his arms, starts to slide his fingers down and over each of Alec’s biceps and forearms until he reaches Alec’s hands, braced and tense on the bed.

Braced and tense and _clawed_ on the bed, and Nolan hesitates for just a second—just long enough to give Alec a chance to protest—and then he carefully trails his fingers over the back of Alec’s right hand until he gets to the tips of Alec’s claws. Swallowing—his mouth still hovering a hair’s breadth from Alec’s but the two of them no longer kissing, Alec’s shoulders tightening as they both turn to stare down at their stacked hands—Nolan slowly, deliberately traces the pad of his middle finger over and around the edge of one of Alec’s deadly claws, Alec holding himself still, so still.

Then—Nolan meeting Alec’s eyes as he does it, watching, waiting for any sign of discomfort or fear—Nolan slowly wraps his fingers around Alec’s wrist, encourages it up between them until he’s holding it, hovering, just a few inches away from his mouth. Alec’s throat bobs as he swallows but he doesn’t say anything, doesn’t try to reclaim his hand, so Nolan carefully twists the hand he has around Alec’s, moves his fingers until he can encourage Alec to fold all but his index and middle fingers against his palm.

And then he holds Alec’s eyes as he gently pulls Alec’s wrist forward until he can wrap his lips around Alec’s clawed fingers, press the pads of them—the tips of his claws barely pricking—to his tongue.

Alec makes a punched-out noise but he doesn’t move, his fingers not so much as twitching in Nolan’s mouth. Closing his eyes, Nolan clenches his free hand around the back of Alec’s neck and sucks at Alec’s fingers, presses his tongue harder against the undersides of them, feels the sensation of the tips of Alec’s claws dig harder against the muscle but not break through.

But Nolan can feel his own hips wanting to twitch, his own body starting to vibrate with tension, and so he carefully pulls Alec’s fingers out of his mouth. He has a plan, is already moving to kiss Alec as he drops Alec’s wrist, but Alec doesn’t give him the opportunity; he wraps his arms around Nolan’s back—wrists bent back to keep his claws clear—and flips them, Nolan landing on his back with an _oof_ that gets almost immediately swallowed by Alec’s mouth.

Pressed thigh to chest with Alec now, Alec settled in the space between his legs and rocking, perfectly and rhythmically against him, Alec braced on his elbows with his clawed hands held somewhere, safely, up above Nolan’s head, Nolan groans and wraps his legs around Alec’s waist, his arms around Alec’s shoulders. Every now and then Alec has to turn his head, spend a few seconds panting against Nolan’s shoulder—his mouth going fanged, Nolan realizes, though Alec always moves before his sharp teeth could so much as threaten to give Nolan a scratch—but it never takes him long to return, teeth once more blunt.

Nolan isn’t sure how much time passes before he feels the tension in Alec’s thighs, his stomach, start to wind tighter, but he recognizes it for what it is and clamps his legs around Alec’s hips, stilling them, almost without conscious thought. Alec gives a startled groan at the sudden movement—the somewhat unintended result being a truly distracting surge of pleasure through Nolan, too—and pulls back to stare down at him, confused.

And for the first time all night Nolan finds himself tongue-tied, his eyes wide as he meets Alec’s flared gaze. But then he swallows, and brings one hand down from Alec’s shoulder, trails it over Alec’s stomach until he can wrap it around Alec’s cock, Alec jerking with a bitten-off moan, but after a few steadying blinks he refocuses on Nolan below him.

“I want—” Nolan starts, but finds he can’t say it, so instead he holds Alec steady in hand and raises his hips some, legs tightening around Alec’s waist until Alec’s cock presses against the underside of Nolan’s ass and Alec’s eyes go almost comically wide.

Alec jerks out of his grip as he sits up—Nolan releasing him quickly—and for a moment Nolan worries he’s done something wrong, but Alec stares down at him, panting and very minutely trembling, and Nolan realizes he’d gone pretty far in the other direction. Alec’s eyes drift from Nolan’s down, down until he gets to Nolan’s cock, lying hard against his stomach between his spread legs, and then it drifts further down, Alec’s throat bobbing as he swallows.

“I, um,” Alec manages, his clawed hands flexing where they’d landed on his own thighs, “I really... _God_ , you have no idea how much, but...”

He brings his hands up from his thighs, wiggles their deadly tips demonstratively. But Nolan just feels a molasses-slow grin spread over his face and he tips his head back further against Alec’s mattress, feels his eyes go heavy-lidded as he says:

“So? _You_ can’t. Doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not _I_ can.”

Alec catches his meaning almost immediately and his mouth drops open, his cock jerking between his legs and his fingers clenching into fists that he only at the last moment manages to keep from closing all the way and breaking skin.

“I, uh. I—no, it… No, it doesn’t,” Alec agrees, looking fully on-board with Nolan’s implied plan if with no particular idea about how to go about concretely _implementing_ it.

Nolan can’t help leaving him hanging for a few more seconds and then he brings one bare foot up to prod at Alec’s hip as he murmurs, amused if not unkind, “So? Do you have anything?”

Nolan isn’t sure what he’s expecting, but it isn’t Alec’s face going caught and then flaming-red as Alec drops his eyes away from Nolan’s, his fingers—the effect a little strangely dissonant considering his still-shifted claws—tangling together in an embarrassed gesture.

“You do!” Nolan laughs, delighted and turned-on and just weirdly fond of Alec’s bitten-lipped grimace.

“Stiles,” Alec blurts out; it’s almost an explanation in and of itself, but Alec continues, “Mrs. McCall made us go pick up more cinnamon rolls from the store the morning after Thanksgiving, you remember? We were almost _done_ when we passed the—the—you know.” Here his blush deepens, and then his expression just goes totally resigned, “Anyway, I knew he’d gotten stuff for Theo because he was like, weirdly proud of himself for it, but I didn’t know he’d gotten any for, um. For me, not until I got home and realized he’d slipped what he’d bought into my jacket pocket.”

Nolan bites his lips to try and control his amused smile and just completely fails, “Guess you’re going to have to get him a thank-you card or something.”

“Or something,” Alec mutters darkly, but he doesn’t protest when Nolan sits up and kisses him—quick but deep—and then turns until he can knee-walk a few feet over to reach Alec’s night table.

He’s just finished fishing the bottle of lube and tearing off a single condom when he feels Alec’s heat against his back, Alec pressing up against him and burying his face in the back of Nolan’s neck. The bottle and package falling from his suddenly boneless fingers onto the bed, Nolan leans his head back against Alec’s shoulder and lets Alec suck small kisses along his neck, lets him wrap one forearm—claws held carefully out of the way—around Nolan’s hips and haul him back more firmly against Alec’s own. Gasping, Nolan brings one hand up and tangles it in Alec’s hair, holds on as Alec continues to focus on his neck, as Alec’s hip start to rock against his own.

But he knows what he wants, and as good as this is, it’s not _enough_ , so Nolan twists—carefully, mindful of Alec’s claws—in Alec’s grip until he can get his hands on Alec’s shoulders, shove him down flat on the bed. Alec stares up at him, eyes golden and clawed hands left where they’d fallen by his head, and waits, though Nolan can feel the tension in stomach, in his thighs where Nolan is sitting over them. Biting his lip, Nolan reaches forward until he can brace his left hand on Alec’s chest, right over his heart, and then reaches back with his right until he can snag the bottle of lube left off to the side.

Alec’s eyes squeeze shut when Nolan flicks the cap open, his clawed fingers curling around air, and Nolan spares a moment to wonder just how it had sounded to his supernatural hearing; loud like punctuation, maybe, loud like a promise. His own breath starting to come a little faster, the urgency in his chest starting to wind a little tighter, Nolan pulls his bracing hand off Alec’s chest so that he can squeeze a generous amount of lube onto his fingers, then drops the bottle off to the side and braces his hand back over Alec’s chest. Alec moans at the touch and covers his face with his still-clawed hands, his knees coming up to cage Nolan in over his hips best they can.

“ _Jesus_ ,” Alec pants, voice muffled by his palms, and Nolan just grins; thinks _just wait_.

And then—the fingers of his bracing hand digging into Alec’s chest, some—Nolan reaches back to his own entrance and slides a single finger inside, jerks and moans shakily at the feeling. Alec gives a sharp, lupine whine in response and his hips jerk helplessly up against Nolan’s, jostling him and driving his finger in deeper, Nolan crying out.

“Sor—” Alec starts to say, his hands coming free of his face, but Nolan leans forward and slaps his free hand over his mouth before he can finish apologizing, his other hand still at his entrance.

“Don’t you _dare_ ,” Nolan manages to pant out, though it loses something when Alec’s only reaction is to jerk against him again, jostling him once more and causing Nolan’s hand—with its still occupied finger—to move inside himself, Nolan breathing out a high, surprised _oh_.

He opens his eyes and looks down at Alec, who stares back up at him, golden eyes wide, and Nolan feels a slow, syrupy grin take his mouth. He tilts his head in a silent question as he deliberately presses back—the movement driving his finger harder and deeper—against Alec’s bent leg, and Alec stares for only a moment longer before nodding quickly, a little frantically, in agreement. Grinning, Nolan leans down to kiss him, short but dirty, before straightening back up and slowly, carefully, sliding another finger into himself alongside his first.

As soon as he finishes sliding it home Alec deliberately shifts, presses one bent leg forward against the back of Nolan’s hands and drives his hips up. Nolan cries out and has to drop down flat over Alec’s chest at the sensation, folding over his own arm as Alec does it _again_ , and then _again_. Biting back his own whimper, Nolan lifts his head some until he can look at Alec, who’s staring down the length of his own body at Nolan, mouth fully fanged and his clawed fingers buried in his own hair.

“I swear, I _swear_ I’m going to be able to do this to you for real soon,” Alec promises him, and Nolan groans and buries his face back in Alec’s chest, adds another finger as he keeps working himself open, pinned between Alec’s leg and his hips, Alec continuing to move him.

 _Okay, okay_ , Nolan tells himself not long after, and has to shift up and out of reach of Alec’s rocking hips, Alec sucking in a sharp breath at the loss. But the second Nolan pushes himself up, his unsteady left hand once more braced over Alec’s heart, Alec bites back a curse and squeezes his eyes shut, his head arching back and his whole body shuddering as he realizes what’s coming.

His reaction drives a bolt of heat straight through Nolan, who slips his fingers free of himself and twists to fumble for the condom packet, gets it torn open quickly. He pauses some when he turns back forward again, Alec’s flared eyes back open and watching him intently, chest heaving with his short, quick breaths. Holding his gaze, Nolan slowly reaches down to take Alec in hand, slides the condom down over him, Alec’s eyes slipping back shut and his mouth opening on a moan, his stomach and thighs both tightening under Nolan’s hips. Grinning at the sight—but the arousal in his own gut now twisting tight, tight with his own urgency—Nolan gets another palmful of lube and spreads it over Alec, Alec swearing and near jack-knifing up as he does.

“Oh, god, I don’t think I’m going to survive this,” Alec mumbles, his clawed fingers once more buried in his hair.

Nolan just grins and raises up on his knees, gets Alec positioned at his entrance as the humor immediately drains out of Alec and he zeros in on the sight, his thighs twitching with strain against Nolan’s back. Nolan holds himself there for a single second, two, and just when Alec’s eyes flick up to his, searching, Nolan starts to lower himself down.

“Alec, oh,” Nolan breathes at the stretch, at the feeling of _fullness_.

He can tell that Alec is desperately holding himself still, stopping himself from thrusting up, from the way that he can feel Alec’s thighs and hips trembling against his bent legs, the way he can feel Alec’s stomach contract under his hands. Nolan gives a series of small, short cries—entirely unintentional and entirely helpless—as he sinks fully down, his hips flush with Alec’s own.

“Nolan, you’ve got to tell me,” Alec suddenly groans, his hands sliding through his hair and over the top of his face until his palms press against his forehead, “You’ve got to tell me _when—_ ”

“Now,” Nolan cuts him off breathily, meeting Alec’s flared eyes when they snap to his own, “ _Now_ , Alec.”

And Alec, bless him, doesn’t need to be told a third time; he gets his feet fully braced on the mattress and thrusts up, Nolan crying out loudly at the jolt of heat and pleasure it sends arcing up his spine. He gets his hands braced on Alec’s chest and starts to move with him, starts to meet his thrusts until they fall into a rhythm, hard and fast and _perfect_. Nolan keeps his eyes on Alec’s the whole time, caught by the gold, caught by the flash of deadly white fangs he can see behind Alec’s open lips, caught by the glint of moonlight coming in through the windows and reflecting off Alec’s deadly claws, kept safe and away from Nolan by Alec’s head.

It isn’t long before the rhythm of Alec’s hips starts to stutter, his eyes squeezing shut and his head tipping back. So Nolan leans down until he can get his mouth on Alec’s bared neck, sucks as deep as a mark as he can—knowing it’ll be gone almost instantly and that thought, somehow, making it all the _better_ —there as he rocks his hips harder, faster, desperately wanting to bring Alec _over_.

He gets his wish in the next instant as Alec shouts his name, thrusts his hips up against Nolan’s and leaves them there as he comes. The feeling of it is _indescribable_ and Nolan turns his head to the side, moans against the slick skin of Alec’s shoulder at the sensation, as he presses close as he can and lets Alec ride through it.

Finally Alec collapses bonelessly back against the sheets, panting, and Nolan shifts so that Alec’s spent cock slips out of him. He starts to sit up, grinning, hand already reaching for his own neglected cock to give himself the few short strokes it’ll take to tip _himself_ over, too, when suddenly Alec _moves_ ; Nolan ends up flat on his back with a startled yelp, Alec’s shoulders between his splayed-open thighs, before he really knows what just happened.

He stares down at Alec to find him staring back at him through rich, warm, and _brown_ eyes. And then Alec slowly brings his hands up and under Nolan’s legs, wraps them finger by human, claw-free finger around the tops of Nolan’s thighs, his mouth—full of blunt, human teeth—pressing a wet, open-mouthed kiss to Nolan’s inner left thigh. _Oh_ , Nolan thinks, staring down at him through his own wide eyes, and then Alec leans down and takes him in his mouth.

Nolan’s arousal—interrupted as it’d been by Alec’s sudden position change—roars back with a vengeance and he cries out and can’t stop his hips from jerking up towards Alec’s mouth. But Alec just flows with him, and then gets one forearm over Nolan’s hips and pins him down, effortlessly.

“Alec, _oh_ ,” Nolan gasps, his hips continuing to rock against Alec’s hold but barely moving, Alec’s strength—werewolf or not—more than enough to keep him still.

He doesn’t last long, not with the way that Alec’s lips are tight, and his mouth hot, and his tongue pressing hard up against the underside of Nolan’s cock as he bobs his head. Not with the way his body is pleasantly aching from having Alec inside him, the phantom fullness and the pleasant soreness.

Not with the absolutely insanity of the last twenty-four hours; the fight and their flight and the all-consuming, raw _joy_ , and everything in between.

Nolan cries out when he comes, his fingers clenching in Alec’s hair, and Alec just swallows and gentles him through it before sliding up his body and kissing him, slow and deep and lingering, the warmth and weight of his body blanketing Nolan’s own. They stay like that for a few long, quiet minutes, and then Alec turns and nudges his nose along Nolan’s cheek, then his jaw, until finally he buries his face against Nolan’s neck; against his scar. Pressing a kiss to the top of Alec’s head, Nolan brings his arms up around Alec’s shoulders and holds him there, eyes closed and mind finally, _finally_ going quiet.

Finally Alec pulls back until he can brace himself on his elbows, reach forward with one hand and stroke a thumb across Nolan’s cheek. Nolan meets his eyes and reaches up to trace careful fingertips over Alec’s left eyebrow, down over the sweep of his eyelashes, over the bridge of his nose, until he comes to his mouth. Closing his eyes, Alec turns into the touch and presses a kiss to Nolan’s fingers, and then he finishes kneeling up, offers Nolan a hand when he’s steady.

They clean up quickly, Alec disposing of the condom, Nolan ducking into the bathroom to wet a washcloth with warm water and then handing it off to Alec after his own quick scrub-down. This time Alec does find him sweats and a t-shirt to wear, hands them off to Nolan after he’s tugged on his own clothes. He disappears into the bathroom as Nolan is pulling them on, comes back out with a toothbrush—the second of a two-pack and dug out of the bottom of his bathroom cabinet—for Nolan to use.

He stops dead when he sees Nolan, though, and Nolan watches his shoulders move as he inhales a deep, lingering breath. Confused until he isn’t, Nolan grins and plucks at the cheap white cotton over his chest, catches Alec’s eyes as he asks:

“Another one of those werewolf things, huh?”

Alec colors some but his mouth splits in a wide smile, and he gets a hand in Nolan’s shirt—in _Alec’s_ shirt, which Nolan is wearing—and reels Nolan in, kisses him again.

They finish getting ready for bed, and Nolan is just coming out of the bathroom, flicking the light off behind him as he goes, when he notices Alec sitting up in bed, mouth twisted in a small frown. Alec glances up at him and a smile immediately replaces it, but Nolan stops and studies him, curious.

“What is it?” He asks.

Alec just shakes his head and reaches out a hand, gesturing for Nolan to come closer. Nolan does after a moment’s hesitation, lets Alec snag him by the waist and pull him in, Alec sliding over until he can wrap his arms around Nolan’s waist and bury his face in Nolan’s stomach. Even _more_ curious, but feeling weirdly—settled, Nolan just brings his hands up to stroke over Alec’s shoulders, the back of his head, and waits.

“None of my business,” Alec finally answers, pulling back to look at him, “Just—something I overheard, earlier at Theo’s.”

Nolan just laughs quietly, “You’re the only supernatural in this pack who worries about manners, I swear.”

Then he cups Alec’s face and leans down to kiss him, closed-mouthed and soft.

“Ask it.” He murmurs against Alec’s mouth, then leans back to look at him.

Alec looks away for a beat, grimacing, but then he looks back up and says, “When you were upstairs talking to Theo, you told him—you told him he should think about following his own advice. I was just wondering…”

He trails off, but Nolan fills in the rest for him, “What that advice was?”

Alec nods, and Nolan bites his lip, brings a hand forward so that he can trace his fingertips over Alec’s temple, the side of his face.

“I did...a lot of horrible things to Scott and the others, helped others do a lot of horrible things to do them. After—after Rossler and Preston—” Nolan stops, has to swallow past his suddenly tight throat, Alec’s hands tightening around his hips and his thumbs stroking soothing sweeps across his sides, “I tried to refuse Theo’s help with the pain from the beating. He told me punishing myself wouldn’t change anything.”

Nolan stops, the memory of that night—and of Mason, just yesterday, _christ_ , accidentally repeating the same brutal truth—momentarily overwhelming him. But after a beat, after remembering _this_ night, Theo’s apartment full of the McCall pack, loud and _living_ , he continues:

“He said if I wanted to make up for what I did, I should start by making sure Scott and the others didn’t have to find my corpse. And once I did that, I could—I could figure out the rest after.”

Alec stares up at him, eyes soft and expression open as he searches Nolan’s eyes, as he lets Nolan’s search his in return. Then a slow, careful smile blooms over his face and he turns his head so that he can press a gentle kiss to Nolan’s palm, still cupping the side of his face.

“That’s good advice. I hope he follows it,” Alec murmurs, and Nolan knows—he _knows_ —Alec isn’t just talking about Theo.

“Yeah,” Nolan agrees, and feels his eyes crinkle as he smiles down at Alec, as he leans down so that he’s speaking his next words against Alec’s mouth, “It seems to be working out well for me so far, anyway.”

**Author's Note:**

> I have a tumblr! If you liked, consider a [reblog](https://eneiryu.tumblr.com/).


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